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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 



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ESSAYS OF 



ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED 

By T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, MA 




Vitam impendere vero. — Juvenal. 



A. L. BURT COMPANY, * j» * J> <* 
* * * * PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 

,C f : 



.E5S43 






TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 






Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers who can 
be generally understood without a commentary. All his 
theories claim to be drawn direct from facts, to be 
suggested by observation, and to interpret the world as it 
is; and whatever view he takes, he is constant in his 
appeal to the experience of common life. This character- 
istic endows his style with a freshness and vigor which 
would be difficult to match in the philosophical writing 
of any country, and impossible in that of Germany. 
If it were asked whether there were a»> Tr circumstances, 
apart from heredity, to which he owed his mental habit, 
the answer might be found in the abnormal character of 
his early education, his acquaintance with the world 
rather than with books, the extensive travels of his boy- 
hood, his ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake 
and without regard to the emoluments and endowments 
of learning. He was trained in realities even more than 
in ideas; and hence he is original, forcible, clear, an 
enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity; so 
that it may well be said of him, in the words of a writer 
in the " Revue Contemporaine," cen'est pas un philosophe 
comme Us auires, c'est un philosophe qui a vu le monde. 

It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within 
the limits of a prefatory note, to attempt an account of 
Schopenhauer's philosophy, to indicate its sources, or to 
suggest or rebut the objections which may be taken to it, 
M. Ribot, in his excellent little book,* has done all that 

* "La Pliilosophie de Schopenhauer," par Th s Ribot, 



IV TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

is necessary in this direction. But the essays here pre 
sented need a word of explanation. It should be observed, 
and Schopenhauer himself is at pains to point out, that 
his system is like a citadel with a hundred gates: at what- 
ever point you take it up, wherever you make your 
entrance, you are on the road to the center. In this 
respect his writings resemble a series of essays composed 
id support of a single thesis; a circumstance which led 
him to insist, more emphatically even than most philoso- 
phers, that for a proper understanding of his system it 
was necessary to read every line he had written. Perhaps 
it would be more correct to describe " Die Welt als Wille 
und Vorstellung" as his main thesis, and his other 
treatises as merely corollary to it. The essays in these 
volumes form part of the corollary; they are taken from 
a collection published toward the close of Schopenhauer's 
life, and by him entitled " Parerga und Paralipomena," 
as being in the nature of surplusage and illustrative of his 
main position. They are by far the most popular of his 
works, and since their first publication in 1851 they 
have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to 
be intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many 
of them is toward the fundamental idea on which his 
system is based. It may therefore be convenient to 
summarize that idea in a couple of sentences; more es- 
pecially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice 
had been followed and his readers were acquainted with 
the whole of his work. 

All philosophy is in some sense the endeavor to find a 
unifying principle, to discover the most general conception 
underlying the whole field of nature and of knowledge. 
By one of those bold generalizations which occasionally 
mark a real advance in science, Schopenhauer conceived 
this unifying principle, this underlying unity, to consist 
in something analogous to that will which self-conscious- 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. y 

ness reveals to us. Will is, according to him, the 
fundamental reality of the world, the thing-in-itself; and 
its objectivation is what is presented in phenomena. The 
struggle of the will to realize itself evolves the organism, 
which in its turn evolves intelligence as the servant of the 
will. And in practical life the antagonism between the 
will and the intellect arises from the fact that the former 
is the metaphysical substance, the latter something 
accidental and secondary. And further, will is desire, 
that is to say, need of something; hence need and 
pain are what is positive in the world, and the only 
possible happiness is a negation, a renunciation of the 
will to live. 

It is instructive to note, as M. Ribot points out, that in 
finding the origin of all things, not in intelligence, as 
some of his predecessors in philosophy had done, but in 
will, or the force of nature, from which all phenomena 
have developed, Schopenhauer was anticipating something 
of the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. To this 
it may be added that in combating the method of Fichte 
and Hegel, who spun a system out of abstract ideas, and 
in discarding it for one based on observation and experi- 
ence, Schopenhauer can be said to have brought down 
philosophy from heaven to earth. 

In Schopenhauer's view the various forms of religion 
are no less a product of human ingenuity than Art or 
Science. He holds, in effect, that all religions take their 
rise in the desire to explain the world; aud that, in regard 
to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not by preach- 
ing monotheism, polytheism or pantheism, but in so far 
as they recognize pessimism or optimism as the true 
description of life. Hence any religion which looked 
upon the world as being radically evil appealed to him as 
containing an indestructible element of truth. I have 
endeavored to present his view of two of the great reli- 



VI TRAN&IA WK'S PREFACE. 

gions of the world in the extract to whicn I have given 
the title of "The Christian System." The tenor of it is 
to show that, however little he may have been in 
sympathy with the supernatural element, he owed much 
to the moral doctrines of Christianity and of Buddhism, 
between which he traced great resemblance. 

Of Schopenhauer, as of many another writer, it may be 
Baid that he has been misunderstood and depreciated just 
in the degree in which he is thought to be new; and that, 
in treating of the conduct of life, he is, in reality, valu- 
able only in so far as he brings old truths to remembrance. 
His name used to arouse, and in certain quarters still 
arouses, a vague sense of alarm; as though he had come 
to subvert all the rules of right thinking and all the 
principles of good conduct, rather than to proclaim once 
again and give a new meaning to truths with which the 
world has long been familiar. Of his philosophy in its 
more technical aspects, as matter upon which enough, 
perhaps, has been written, no account need be taken here, 
except as it affects the form in which he embodies these 
truths or supplies the fresh light in which he sees them. 
For whatever claims to originality his metaphysical theory 
may possess, the chief interest to be found in his views 
of life is an affair of form rather than of substance; and 
he stands in a sphere of his own, not because he sets new 
problems or opens up undiscovered truths, but in the 
manner in which he approaches what has been already 
revealed. 

He is not on that account less important; for the great 
mass of men at all times requires to have old truths im- 
parted as if they were new — formulated, as it were, 
directly for them as individuals, and of special application 
to their own circumstances in life. A discussion of human 
happiness and the way to obtain it is never either un- 
necessary or uncalled for, if one looks to the extent t<i 



TRANSLA TORS PREFACE. ? ii 

which the lives of most men fall short of even a poor 
ideal, or, again, to the difficulty of reaching any definite 
and secure conclusion. For to such a momentous inquiry 
as this, the vast majority of mankind gives nothing more 
than a nominal consideration, accepting the current 
belief, whatever it may be, on authority, and taking as 
little thought of the grounds on which it rests as a man 
walking takes of the motion of the earth. But for those 
who are not indifferent — for those whose desire to fathom 
the mystery of existence gives them the right to be called 
thinking beings — it is just here, in regard to the conclu- 
sion to be reached, that a difficulty arises, a difficulty 
affecting the conduct of life: for while the great facts of 
existence are alike for all, they are variously appreciated, 
and conclusions differ, chiefly from innate diversity of 
temperament in those who draw them. It is innate tem- 
perament, acting on a view of the facts necessarily in- 
complete, that has inspired, so many different teachers. 
The tendencies of a man's own mind — the idols of the 
cave before which he bows — interpret the facts in accord- 
ance with his own nature: he elaborates a system contain- 
ing, perhaps, a grain of truth, to which the whole of life 
is then made to conform; the facts purporting to be the 
foundation of the theory, and theory in its turn giving 
its own color to the facts. 

Nor is this error, the manipulation of facts to suit a 
theory, avoided in the views of life which are presented 
by Schopenhauer. It is true that he aimed especially at 
freeing himself from the trammels of previous systems; 
but he was caught in those of his own. His natural 
desire was to resist the common appeal to anything ex- 
tramundane — anything outside or beyond life — as the basis 
of either hope or fear. He tried to look at life as it is; 
but the metaphysical theory on which his whole philosophy 
rests made it necessary for him, as he thought, to regard 



T iii TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

it as an unmixed evil. He calls our present existence an 
infinitesimal moment between two eternities, the past and 
the future, a moment — like the life of Plato's " Dwellers 
in the Cave" — filled with the pursuit of shadows; where 
everything is relative, phenomenal, illusory, and man is 
bound in the servitude of ignorance, struggle and need, 
in the endless round of effort and failure. If you confine 
yourself, says Schopenhauer, only to some of its small 
details, life may indeed appear to be a comedy, because 
of the one or two bright spots of happy circumstance to 
be fcund in it here and there; but when you reach a 
higher point of view and a broader outlook, these soon be- 
come invisible, and life, seen from the distance which 
brings out the true proportion of all its parts, is revealed 
as a tragedy — a long record of struggle and pain, with the 
death of the hero as the final certainty. How then, he 
asks, can a man make the best of his brief hour under the 
hard conditions of his destiny? What is the true 
Wisdom of Life? 

Schopenhauer has no pre-conceived divine plan to 
vindicate; no religious or moral enthusiasm to give a 
roseate hue to some far-off event, obliging us in the end 
to think that all things work together for good. Let 
poets and theologians give play to imagination! he, at any 
rate, will profess no knowledge of anything beyond our 
ken. If our existence does not entirely fail of its aim, it 
must, he says, be suffering; for this is what meets us every- 
where in the world, and it is absurd to look upon it as the 
result of chance. Still, in the face of all this suffering, 
and in spite of the fact that the uncertainty of life 
destroys its value as an end in itself, every man's natural 
desire is to preserve his existence; so that life is a blind, 
unreasoning force, hurrying us we know not whither. 
From his high metaphysical standpoint, Schopenhauer is 
ready to admit that there are nmny things in life which 



TRANSLA TOR'S PREFA GE. {% 

give a short satisfaction and blind us for the moment to 
the realities of existence — pleasures as they may be called, 
in so far as they are a mode of relief; but that pleasure is 
not positive in its nature nor anything more than the 
negation of suffering, is proved by the fact that, if pleas- 
ures come in abundance, pain soon returns in the form of 
satiety; so that the sense of illusion is all that has been 
gained. Hence, the most a man can achieve in the way 
of welfare is a measure of relief from this suffering; and, 
if people were prudent, it is at this they would aim, in- 
stead of trying to secure a happiness which always flies 
from them. 

It is a trite saying that happiness is a delusion, a chimera, 
the fata morgana of the heart; but here is a writer who 
will bring our whole conduct into line with that, as a 
matter of practice; making pain the positive groundwork 
of life, and a desire to escape it the spur of all effort. 
While most of those who treat of the conduct of life come 
at last to the conclusion, more or less vaguely expressed, 
that religion and morality form a positive source of true 
happiness, Schopenhauer does not professedly take this 
view; though it is quite true that the practical outcome of 
his remarks tends, as will be seen, in support of it; with 
this difference, however — he does not direct the imagina- 
tion to anything outside this present life as making it 
worth while to live at all; his object is to state the facts of 
existence as they immediately appear, and to draw conclu- 
sions as to what a wise man will do in the face of 
them. 

In the practical outcome of Schopenhauer's ethics — the 
end and aim of those maxims of conduct which he recom- 
mends, there is nothing that is not substantially akin 
to theories of life which, in different forms, the greater 
part of mankind is presumed to hold in reverence. It is 
the premises rather than the conclusion of his argument 



X TRANSLA TOR'S PREhACE. 

which interest us as something new. The whole world, he 
says, with all its phenomena of change, growth and devel- 
opment, is ultimately the manifestation of will — Wille 
unci Vorstellung — a blind force conscious of itself only 
when it reaches the stage of intellect. And life is a con- 
stant self-assertion of this will; a long desire which ie 
never fulfilled; disillusion inevitably following upon attain- 
ment, because the will, the thing-in-itself — in philosoph- 
ical language, the noumenon — always remains as the perma- 
nent element; and with this persistent exercise of its claim, 
it can never be satisfied. So life is essentially suffering; 
and the only remedy for it is the freedom of the intellect 
from the servitude imposed by its master, the will. 

The happiness a man can attain, is thus, in Schopen- 
hauer's view, negative only; but how r is it to be acquired ? 
Some temporary relief, he says, may be obtained through 
the medium of Art, for in the apprehension of Art we are 
raised out of our bondage, contemplating objects of thought 
as they are in themselves, apart from their relations to oui 
own ephemeral existence and free from any taint of the 
will. This contemplation of pure thought is destroyed 
when Art is degraded from its lofty sphere, and made an 
instrument in the bondage of the will. How few of those 
who feel that the pleasure of Art transcends all others 
could give such a striking explanation of their feeling ! 

But the highest ethical duty, and consequently the 
supreme endeavor after happiness, is to withdraw from the 
struggle of life, and so obtain release from the misery 
which that struggle imposes upon all, even upon those who 
are for the moment successful. For as will is the inmost 
kernel of everything, so it is identical under all its mani- 
festations; and through the mirror of the world a man 
may arrive at the knowledge of himself. The recognition 
of the identity of our own nature with that of others is 
the beginning and foundation of all true morality. For 



TRAN8LA TORS PREFA CE. XI 

once a man clearly perceives this solidarity of the will, 
there is aroused in him a feeling of sympathy which is the 
main-spring of ethical conduct. This feeling of sympathy 
must, in any true moral system, prevent our obtaining 
success at the price of others' loss. Justice, in this theory, 
conies to be a noble, enlightened self-interest; it will for- 
bid our doing wrong to our fellow-man, because, in injur- 
ing him, we are injuring ourselves — our own nature, 
which is identical with his. On the other hand, the recog- 
nition of this identity of the will must lead to commisera- 
tion — a feeling of sympathy with our fellow-sufferers — to 
acts of kindness and benevolence, to the manifestation of 
what Kant, in the " Metaphysic of Ethics/' calls the only 
absolute good, the good will. In Schopenhauer's phrase- 
ology, the human will, in other words, spus, the love of 
life, is in itself the root of all evil, and goodness lies in 
renouncing it. Theoretically, his ethical doctrine is the 
extreme of socialism, in a large sense; a recognition of the 
inner identity and equal claims, of all men with ourselves; 
a recognition issuing in dyanrj, universal benevolence, and 
a stifling of pp.rticular desires. 

It may come as a surprise to those who affect to hold 
Schopenhauer in abhorrence, without, perhaps, really 
knowing the nature of his views, that, in this theory of the 
essential evil of the human will — ?/3<»s, the common selfish 
idea of life — he is reflecting and indeed probably borrowing 
what he describes as the fundamental tenet of Christian 
theology, that "the whole creation groaneth and tra- 
vaileth in pain,* standing in need of redemption. Though 
Schopenhauer was no friend to Christian theology in its 
ordinary tendencies, he was very much in sympathy with 
some of the doctrines which have been connected with it, 
In his opinion the foremost truth which Christianity pro* 

" ' ■ - ' ' i mrui 

* Romans viii. 22. 



xii TRANSLA TORS PREFACE. 

claimed to the world lay in its recognition of pessimism, 
Its view that the world was essentially corrupt, and that 
the devil was its prince or ruler.* It would be out of 
place here to inquire into the exact meaning of this state* 
ment, or to determine the precise form of compensation 
provided for the ills of life under any scheme of doctrine 
which passes for Christian: and even if it were in place, 
the task would be an extremely difficult one; for probably 
no system of belief has ever undergone, at various periods, 
more radical changes than Christianity. But whatever 
prospect of happiness it may have held out, at an early 
date of its history, it soon came to teach that the necessary 
preparation for happiness, as a positive spiritual state, is 
renunciation, resignation, a looking away from external 
life to the inner life of the soul — a kingdom not of this 
world. So far, at least, as concerns its view of the world 
itself, and the main lesson and duty which life teaches, 
there is nothing in the theory of pessimism which does not 
accord witli that religion which is looked up to as the 
guide of life over a great part of the civilized world. 

What Schopenhauer does is to attempt a metaphysical exN 
planation of the evil of- life, without any reference to any- 
thing outside it. Philosophy, he urges, should be cosmol- 
ogy, not theology; an explanation of the world, not a 
scheme of divine knowledge: it should leave the gods 
alone — to use an ancient phrase — and claim to be left alone 
in return. Schopenhauer was not concerned, as the 
apostles and fathers of the Church were concerned, to 
formulate a scheme by which the ills of this life should be 
remedied in another — an appeal to the poor and oppressed, 
conveyed often in a material form, as, for instance, in the 
story of Dives and Lazarus. In his theory of life as the 
self-assertion of will, be endeavors to account for the 6in, 

* John xu.31 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFA CE. x iii 

misery and iniquity of the world, and to point to the way 
of escape — the denial of the will to live. 

Though Schopenhauer's views of life have this much in 
common with certain aspects of Christian doctrine, they 
are in decided antagonism with another theory, which, 
though, comparatively speaking, the birth of yesterday, 
lias already been dignified by the name of a religion, and 
has, no doubt, a certain number of followers. It is the 
theory which looks upon the life of mankind as a continual 
progress toward a state of perfection, and humanity in its 
nobler tendencies as itself worthy of worship. To those 
who embrace this theory, it will seem that because Schopen- 
hauer does not hesitate to declare the evil in the life of 
mankind to be far in excess of the good, and that, as long 
as the human will remains what it is, there can be no radi- 
cal change for the better, he is therefore outside the pale 
of civilization, an alien from the commonwealth of ordered 
knowledge and progress. But it has yet to be seen 
whether the religion of humanity will fare better, as a 
theory of conduct or as a guide of life, than either Chris- 
tianity or Buddhism. If any one doctrine may be named 
which has distinguished Christianity wherever it has been 
a living force among its adherents, it is the doctrine of 
renunciation; the same doctrine which in a different shape 
and with other surroundings, forms the spirit of Bud- 
dhism. With those great religions of the world which man- 
kind has hitherto professed to revere as the most ennobling 
of all infiuences ; Schopenhauer's theories, not perhaps in 
their details, but in the principle which informs them, are 
in close alliance. 

Renunciation, according to Schopenhauer, is the truest 
wisdom of life, from the higher ethical standpoint. His 
heroes are the Christian ascetics of the Middle Age, and 
the followers of Buddha who turn away from the Sansara 
to the Nirvana. But our modern habits of thought are 



Xiv TRANSLA TOR'S PREFA CR 

different. We look askance at the doctrines, and we have 
no great enthusiasm for the heroes. The system which is 
in vogue among us just now objects to the identification 
of nature with evil, and in fact, abandons ethical dualism 
altogether. And if nature is not evil, where, it will be 
asked, is the necessity or the benefit of renunciation 
— a question which may even come to be generally 
raised, in a not very distant future, on behalf of some new 
conception of Christianity. 

And from another poiut of view, let it be frankly 
admitted that renunciation is incompatible with ordinary 
practice, with the rules of life as we are compelled to 
formulate them; and that, to the vast majority, the doc- 
trine seems little but a mockery, a hopelessly unworkable 
plan, inapplicable to the conditions under which men 
have to exist. 

In spite of the fact that he is theoretically in sympathy 
with truths which lie at the foundation of certain widely 
revered systems, the world has not yet accepted Schopen- 
hauer for what he proclaimed himself to be, a great 
teacher: and probably for the reason that hope is not an 
element in his wisdom of life, and that he attenuates love 
into something that is not a real, living force — a shadowy 
recognition of the identity of the will. For men are disin- 
clined to welcome a theory which neither flatters their 
present position nor holds out any prospect of better things 
to come. Optimism— the belief that in the end everything 
will be for the best — is the natural creed of mankind; and 
a writer who of set purpose seeks to undermine it by an 
appeal to facts is regarded as one who tries to rob human- 
ity of its rights. How seldom an appeal to the facts 
within our reach is really made! Whether the evil of life 
actually out-weighs the good — or, if we should look for 
better things, what is the possibility or the nature of a 
future life, either for ourselves as individuals, or as part 






TRANSLA TOR'S PREFACE. XV 

of some great whole, or, again, as contributing to a coming 
state of perfection? — such inquiries claim an amount of 
attention which the mass of men everywhere is unwilling 
to give. But, in any case whether it is a vague assent to 
current beliefs, or a blind reliance on a baseless certainty, 
or an impartial attempt to put away what is false — hope 
remains as the deepest foundation of every faith in a 
happy future. 

But it should be observed that this looking to the 
future as a complement for the present is dictated mainly 
by the desire to remedy existing ills; and that the great 
hold which religion has on mankind, as an incentive to 
present happiness, is the promise it makes of coming per- 
fection. Hope for the future is a tacit admission of evil 
in the present; for if a man is completely happy in this 
life, and looks upon happiness as the prevailing order, he 
will not think so much of another. So a discussion of the 
nature of happiness is not thought complete if it takes 
account only of our present life, and unless it connects 
what we are now and what we do here with what we may 
be hereafter. Schopenhauer's theory does not profess to 
do this; it promises no positive good to the individual; at 
most, only relief: he breaks the idol of the world, and 
sets up nothing in its place; and like many another 
iconoclast, he has long been condemned by those whose 
temples he has desecrated. If there are optimistic 
theories of life, it is not life itself, he would argue, which 
gives color to them; it is rather the reflection of some 
great final cause which humauity has created as the last 
hope of its redemption: 

" Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, 
And hell the shadow from a soul on fire, 
Cast on the darkness into which ourselves. 
So late em erged from, shall so soon expire. " * 

* Omar Khayyam ; translated by E. Fitzgerald. 



xvi TRANSLA TOR& PREFA CE. 

Still, hope, it may be said, is not knowledge, nor a real 
answer to any question; at most, a makeshift, a moral 
support for intellectual weakness. The truth is that, as 
theories, both optimism and pessimism are failures; be- 
cause they are extreme views where only a very partial 
judgment is possible. And in view of the great uncer- 
tainty of all answers, most of those who do not accept a 
stereotyped system leave the question alone, as being either 
of little interest, or of no bearing on the welfare of their 
lives, which are commonly satisfied with low aims; tacitly 
ridiculing those who demand an answer as the most press- 
ing affair of existence. But the fact that the final pro- 
blems of the world are still open, makes in favor of an 
honest attempt to think them out, in spite of all previous 
failure or still existing difficulty; and however old these 
problems may be, the endeavor to solve them is one which 
it is always worth while to encourage afresh. For the 
individual advantages which attend an effort to find the 
true path accrue quite apart from any success in reaching 
the goal; and even though the height we strive to climb 
be inaccessible, we can still see and understand more than 
those who never leave the plain. The sphere, it is true, 
is enormous — the study of human life and destiny as a 
whole; and our mental vision is so ill-adapted to a range 
of this extent that to aim at forming a complete scheme is 
to attempt the impossible. It must be recognized that 
che data are insufficient for large views, and that we ought 
not to go beyond the facts we have, the facts of ordinary 
life, interpreted by the common experience of every day. 
These form our only material. The views we take must 
of necessity be fragmentary — a mere collection of apergus, 
rough guesses at the undiscovered; of the same nature, in- 
deed, as all our possessions in the way of knowledge — little x 
tracts of solid land reclaimed from the mysterious ocean of 
the unknown. 



TRANSLATORS PREFACE. xvii 

But if we do not admit Schopenhauer to be a great 
teacher — because he is out of sympathy with the highest 
aspirations of mankind, and too ready to dogmatize from 
partial views — he is a very suggestive writer, and emi- 
nently readable. His style is brilliant, animated, forcible, 
pungent; although it is also discursive, irresponsible, and 
with a tendency to superficial generalization. He brings in 
the most unexpected topics without any very sure sense of 
their relative place; everything, in fact, seems to be fair 
game, once he has taken up his pen. His irony is note- 
worthy; for it extends beyond mere isolated sentences, and 
sometimes applies to whole passages, which must be read 
cum grano salis. And if he has grave faults as well as 
excellences of literary treatment, he is at least always witty 
and amusing, and that, too, in dealing with subjects — as 
here, for instance, with the Conduct of Life — on which 
many others have been at once severe and dull. It is easy 
to complain that though he is witty and amusing, he is 
often at the same time bitter and ill-natured. This is in 
some measure the unpleasant side of his uncompromising 
devotion to truth, his resolute eagerness to dispel illusion 
at any cost — those defects of his qualities which were 
intensified by a solitary and, until his last years, unappre- 
ciated life. He was naturally more disposed to coerce thau 
to flatter the world into accepting his views; he was above 
all things un esprit fort, and at times brutal in the use of 
his strength. If it should be urged that, however great 
his literary qualities, he is not worth reading because he 
takes a narrow view of life and is blind to some of its 
greatest blessings, it will be well to remember the profound 
truth of that line which a friend inscribed on his earliest 
biography: "Si non err asset fecer at ille minus,"* a truth 
which is seldom without application, whatever be the form of 
human effort. Schopenhauer cannot be neglected because 

* Slightly altered from Martial. Epigram : I. xxii. 



Xviii TMAfrSLA TORS PREFACE. 

he takes an unpleasant view of existence, for it is a view 
which must present itself, at some time, to every thought- 
ful person. To be outraged by Schopenhauer means to be 
ignorant of many of the facts of life. 

In this one of his smaller works, " Aphorismen zur 
Lebensweisheit," Schopenhauer abandons his high meta- 
physical standpoint, and discusses, with the same zest and 
appreciation as in fact marked his enjoyment of 'hem, 
some of the pleasures which a wise man will seek to ob^s'n 
— health, moderate possessions, intellectual riches. Ana 
when, as in this little work, he comes to speak of the 
wisdom of life as the practical art of living, the pessimist 
view of human destiny is obtruded as little as possible. 
His remarks profess to be the result of a compromise — an 
attempt to treat life from the common standpoint. He is 
content to call these witty and instructive pages a series of 
aphorisms; thereby indicating that he makes no claim to 
expound a complete theory of conduct. It will doubtless 
occur to any intelligent reader that his observations are 
but fragmentary thoughts on various phases of life; and, 
in reality, mere aphorisms — in the old, Greek sense of the 
word— pithy distinctions, definitions of facts, a marking- 
off, as it were, of the true from the false in some of our 
ordinary notions of life and prosperity. Here there is 
little that is not in complete harmony with precepts to 
which the world has long been accustomed; and in this 
respect, also, Schopenhauer offers a suggestive comparison 
rather than a contrast with most writers on happiness. 

The philosopher in his study is conscious that the world 
is never likely to embrace his higher metaphysical or 
ethical standpoint, and annihilate the will to live; nor did 
Schopenhauer himself do so except so far as he, in 
common with most serious students of life, avoided the 
ordinary aims of mankind. The theory which rec- 
ommended universal benevolence as the highest ethical 



IRAN SLA TO TVS PR EFA CE. xix 

duty,, came, as a matter of practice, to mean a formal 
standing- aloof — the ne plus ultra of individualism. The 
Wisdom of Life, as the practical art of living, is a com- 
promise. We are here not by any choice of our own; and 
while we strive to make the best of it, we must not let 
ourselves be deceived. If you want to be happy, he says, 
it will not do to cherish illusions. Schopenhauer would 
have found nothing admirable in the conclusion at which 
the late M. Edmond Scherer, for instance, arrived. 
" L'art de vivre" he wrote in his preface to Aniiel's 
"Journal," " c'est de sefaire une raison, de souscnre au 
compromts, de se preter aux fictions." Schopenhauer 
conceives his mission to be, rather, to dispel illusion, to 
tear the mask from life; a violent operation, not always 
productive of good. Some illusion, he urges, may 
profitably be dispelled by recognizing that no amount of 
external aid will make up for inward deficiency; and that 
if a man has not got the elements of happiness in himself, 
all the pride, pleasure, beauty and interest of the world 
will not give it to him. Success in life, as gauged by the 
ordinary material standard, means to place faith wholly in 
externals as the source of happiness; to assert and empha- 
size the common will to live, in a word to be vulgar. 
He protests against this search for happiness — something 
subjective — in the world of our surroundings, or anywhere 
but in a man's own self; a protest the sincerity of which 
might well be imitated by some professed advocates of 
spiritual claims. 

It would be interesting to place his utterances on this 
point side by side with those of a distinguished interpreter 
of nature in this country, who has recently attracted 
thousands of readers by describing "The Pleasures of 
Life;" in other words, the blessings which the world holds 
out to all who can enjoy them — health, books, friends, 
travel, education, art. On the common ground of their 



xx TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

regard for these pleasures there is no disagreement between 
the optimist and the pessimist. But a characteristic dif- 
ference of view may be found in the application of a rule of 
fife which Schopenhauer seems never to tire of repeating; 
namely, that happiness consists for the most part in what 
a man is in himself, and that the pleasure he derives from 
these blessings will depend entirely upon the extent to 
which his personality really allows him to appreciate them. 
This is a rule which runs some risk of being overlooked 
when a writer tries to dazzle the mind's eye by describing 
all the possible sources of pleasure in the world of our 
surroundings; but Sir John Lubbock, in common with 
every one who attempts a fundamental answer to the 
question of happiness, cannot afford to overlook it. The 
truth of the rule is perhaps taken for granted in his account 
of life's pleasures; but it is significant that it is only when 
he comes to speak of life's troubles that he freely admits 
the force of it. " Happiness," he says, in this latter con- 
nection, " depends much more on what is within than 
without us." Yet a rigid application of this truth might 
perhaps discount the effect of those pleasures with which 
the world is said to abound. That happiness as well as 
unhappiness depends mainly upon what is within, is more 
clearly recognized in the case of trouble; for when troubles 
come upon a man, they influence him, as a rule, much 
more deeply than pleasures. How few, even among the 
millions to whom these blessings are open — health, books, 
travel, art — really find any true or permanent happiness 
in them ! 

While Schopenhauer's view of the pleasures of life may 
be elucidated by comparing it with that of a popular 
writer like Sir John Lubbock, and by contrasting the 
appeals they severally make to the outer and the inner 
world as a source of happiness; Schopenhauer's view of 
life itself will stand out more clearly if we remember the 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxi 

opinion so boldly expressed by the same English writer. 
" If we resolutely look," observes Sir John Lubbock,"! 
do not say at the bright side of things, but at things as 
they really are; if we avail ourselves of the manifold bless- 
ings which surround us, we cannot but feel that life is 
indeed a glorious inheritance."* There is a splendid excess 
of optimism about this statement which well fits it to show 
up the darker picture drawn by the German philosopher. 

Finally, it should be remembered that though Schopen- 
hauer's picture of the world is gloomy and somber, there 
is nothing weak or unmanly in his attitude. If a happy 
existence, he says — not merely an existence free from pain 
— is denied us, we can at least be heroes and face life with 
courage: das hochste was der Mensch erlangen kann ist ein 
heroischer Lebenslauf. A noble character will never 
complain at misfortune; for if a man looks round him at 
other manifestations of that which is his own inner nature, 
the will, he finds sorrows happening to his fellow-men 
harder to bear than any that have come upon himself. 
And the ideal of nobility is to deserve the praise which 
Hamlet — in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Pessimism — gave to 
his friend: 

" Thou hast been 
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing." 

But perhaps Schopenhauer's theory carries with it its 
own correction. He describes existence as a more or less 
violent oscillation between pain and boredom. If this 
were really the sum of life, and we had to reason from 
such a partial view, it is obvious that happiness would lie 
in action; and that life would be so constituted as to 
supply two natural and inevitable incentives to action; 
and thus to contain in itself the very conditions of happi- 
ness. Life itself reveals our destiny. It is not the 

*" The Pleasures of Life. Part I. p. 5." 



xxii TBANSLA TORS PREFACE. 

struggle which produces misery, it is the mistaken aims 
and the low ideals — was tins alle bandigt, das Gemeine! 

That Schopenhauer conceives life as an evil is a 
deduction, and possibly a mistaken deduction, from his 
metaphysical theory. Whether his scheme of things is 
correct or not — and it shares the common fate of all 
metaphysical systems in being unverifiable, and to that 
extent unprofitable — he will in the last resort have made 
good his claim to be read by his insight into the varied 
needs of human life. It may be that a future age will 
consign his metaphysics to the philosophical lumber-room; 
but he is a literary artist as well as a philosopher, and he 
can make a bid for fame in either capacity. T. B. S. 



CONTENTS, 



THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

PASS 

Introduction 1 

I. Division of the Subject » 2 

II. Personality, or What a Man Is 10 

III. Property, or What a Man Has 33 

IV. Position, or a Man's Place in the Estimation of Others — 

Sect. 1 . Reputation , 40 

" 2. Pride 46 

" 3. Rank 49 

44 4. Honor 50 

" 5. Fame 78 



COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

Introduction 95 

I. General Rules 96 

II. Our Relation to Ourselves 106 

III. Our Relation to Others 141 

IV. Worldly Fortune 168 

V. The Ages of Life 180 



RELIGION AND OTHER ESSAYS. 

Religion. A Dialogue v .«»*** ...••• 20? 

A Few Words on Pantheism , t .„ 240 

On Books and Reading e - . . . ° . . • • 245 



xxiv CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

On Physiognomy 250 

Psychological Observations. 258 

The Christian System 268 

The Failure of Philosophy 277 

The Metaphysics of Fine Art 279 



THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

On Authorship 291 

On Style 298 

On the Study of Latin 313 

On Men of Learning 31 6 

On Thinking for One's Self 321 

On Some Forms of Literature. 330 

On Criticism « 337 

On Reputation 347 

On Genius 363 



STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

On the Sufferings of the World 381 

On the Vanity of Existence , 394 

On Suicide , 399 

Immortality: A Dialogue 404 

Further Psychological Observations , 408 

On Education 427 

On Women 434 

On Noise 447 

A Few Parable < • « 452 



THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Ik these pages I shallspeak of "The Wisdom of Life" in 
the common meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of 
ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest possible 
amotmt of pleasure and success ; an art the theory of 
which may be called Eudcemonology , for it teaches us how 
to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might per- 
haps be defined as one which, looked at from a purely 
objective point of view, or, rather, after cool and mature 
reflection — for the question necessarily involves subjective 
considerations — would be decidedly preferable to non- 
existence ; implying that we should cling to it for its cwa 
sake, and not merely from the fear of death ; and further, 
that we should never like it to come to an end. 

Now whether human life corresponds, or could possibly 
correspond, to this conception of existence, is a question to 
which, as is well-known, my philosophical system returns 
a negative answer. On the eudsemonistic hypothesis, how- 
ever, the question must be answered in the affirmative ; 
and I have shown, in the second volume of my chief work 
(ch. 49), that this hypothesis is based upon a fundamental 
mistake. Accordingly, in elaborating the scheme of a 
happy existence, I have had to make a complete surrender 
of the higher metaphysical and ethical standpoint to which 
my own theories lead ; and everything I shall say here will 
to some extent rest upon a compromise ; in so far, that is, 
as I take the common standpoint of every day, and 
embrace the error which is at the bottom of it. My 
remarks, therefore, will possess only a qualified value, foi 
the very word eudcemonology is a euphemism, Further, I 
make no claims to completeness ; partly because the sub- 
ject is inexhaustibie, and partly because I shouH otherwise 



2 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

have to say over again what has been already said by 
others. 

The only book composed, as far as I remember, with a 
like purpose to that which animates this collection of 
aphorisms, is Cardan's De utilitate ex adversis capiendo,, 
which is well worth reading, and may be used to supple- 
ment the present work. Aristotle, it is true, has a few 
words on eudsemonology in the fifth chapter of the first 
book of his " Rhetoric ;" but what he says does not come to 
very much. As compilation is not my business, I have 
made no use of these predecessors ; more especially 
because in the process of compiling individuality of view 
is lost, and individuality of view is the kernel of works of 
this kind. In general, indeed, the wise in all ages have 
always said the same thing, and the fools, who at all times 
form the immense majority, have in their way too acted 
alike, and done just the opposite ; and so it will continue. 
For, as Voltaire says, " we shall leave this world as foolish 
and as wicked as we found it on our arrival." 



CHAPTER I. 

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 

Aristotle* divides the blessings of life into three clas- 
ses — those which come to us from without, those of the soul, 
and those of the body. Keeping nothing of this division 
but the number, I observe that the fundamental differ- 
ences in human lot may be reduced to three distinct 
classes : 

(1) What a man is : that is to say, personality, in the 
widest sense of the word : under which are included 
health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, 
intelligence and education. 

(2) What a man has : that is, property and possessions 
of every kind. 

(3) How a man stands in the estimation of others : by 
which is to be understood, as everybody knows, what a man 
is in the eyes of his fellow-men, or, more strictly, the light 
in which chey regard him. This is shown by their opinion 

* "Eth. Nicbora." I. a 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 3 

of him ; and their opinion is in its turn manifested by the 
honor in which he is held, and by his rank and reputation. 
The differences which come under the first head are 
those which Nature herself has set between man and 
man ; and from this fact alone w r e may at once infer that 
they influence the happiness or unhappiness of mankind in 
a much more vital and radical way than those contained 
under the two following heads, which are merely the effect 
of human arrangements. Compared with genuine per- 
sonal advantages, such as a great mind or a great heart, 
all the privileges of rank or birth, even of royal birth, are 
but as kings on the stage to kings in real life. The same 
thing was said long ago by Metrodorus, the earliest dis- 
ciple of Epicurus, who wrote as the title of one of his 
chapters, " The happiness w r e receive from ourselves is 
greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings."* 
And it is an obvious fact, which cannot be called in question, 
that the principal element in a man's well-being — indeed, 
in the whole tenor of his existence — is what he is made 
of, his inner constitution. For this is the immediate 
eource of that inward satisfaction or dissatisfaction re- 
sulting from the sum total of his sensations, desires and 
thoughts ; while his surroundings, on the other hand, exert 
only a mediate or indirect influence upon him. This is 
why the same external events or circumstances affect no 
two people alike ; even with perfectly similar surround- 
ings every one lives in a w T orld of his own. For a man has 
immediate apprehension only of his ow T n ideas, feelings 
and volitions ; the outer world can influence him only in 
so far as it brings these to life. The world in which a 
man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he 
looks at h% and so it proves different to different men ; to 
one it is barren, dull, and superficial ; to another rich, 
interesting, and full of meaning. On hearing of the 
interesting events which have happened in the course of a 
man's experience, many people will wish that similar 
things had happened in their lives too, completely forget- 
ting that they should be envious rather of the mental 
aptitude which lent those events the significance they 
possess when he describes them ; to a man of genius they 
were interesting adventures ; but to the dull perceptions 

* Cf. Clemens Alex, Strom, II., 21. 



ft THW WISDOM OF LIFE. 

of an ordinary individual they would have been stale, 
everyday occurrences. This is in the highest degree tha 
case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are 
obviously founded upon actual facts ; where it is open to a 
foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful 
things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty 
power of phantasy which was capable of turning a fairly 
common, experience into something so great and beautiful. 
In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament 
will make a scene in a tragedy out of what appears to the 
sanguine man only in the light of an interesting conflict, 
and to a phlegmatic soul as something without any mean- 
ing — all of which rests upon the fact that every event, in 
order to be realized and appreciated, requires the co-opera- 
tion of two factors : namely, a subject and an object ; 
although these are as closely and necessarily connected as 
oxygen and hydrogen in water. When therefore the objective 
or external factor in an experience is actually the same, but 
the subjective or personal appreciation of it varies, the 
event is just as much a different one in the eyes of different 
persons as if the objective factors had not been alike ; for 
to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in the 
world presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only 
poorly appreciated — like a fine landscape in dull weather, 
or in the reflection of a bad camera obscura. In plain 
language, every man is pent up within the limits of his 
own consciousness, and cannot directly get beyond those 
limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin ; so 
external aid is not of much use to him On the stage, one 
man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant or a 
soldier or a general, and so on — mere external differences • 
the inner reality, the kernel of all these appearances is the 
same — a poor player, with all the anxieties of his lot. In 
life it is just the same. Differences of rank and wealth 
give every man his part to play, but this by no means implies 
a difference of inward happiness and pleasure ; here, too, 
there is the same being in all — a poor mortal, with his hard- 
ships and troubles. Though these may, indeed, in every case 
proceed from dissimilar causes, they are in their essential 
nature much the same m all their forms, with degrees of in- 
tensity which vary, no doubt, but in no wise correspond to the 
part a man has to play, to the presence or absence of position 
and wealth. Since everything which exists or happens for 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 5 

a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it 
alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitu- 
tion of this consciousness, which is in most cases far more 
important than the circumstances which go to form its 
contents. All the pride and pleasure of the world, 
mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, is poor indeed 
compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing hip 
"Don Quixote" in a miserable prison. The objective half of 
life and reality is in the hand of fate, and accordingly 
takes various forms in different cases : the subjective half 
is ourself, and in essentials it always remains the same. 

Hence the life of every man is stamped with the same 
character throughout, however much his external circum- 
stances may alter ; it is like a series of variations on s 
single theme. No one can get beyond his own individual- 
ity. An animal, under whatever circumstances it is 
placed, remains within the narrow limits to which nature 
has irrevocably consigned it ; so that our endeavors to 
make a pet happy must always keep within the compass of 
its nature, and be restricted to what it can feel. So it is 
with man ; the measure of the happiness he can attain is 
determined beforehand by his individuality. More espe- 
cially is this the case with the mental powers which fix 
once for all his capacity for the higher kinds of pleasure. 
If these powers are small, no efforts from without, nothing 
that his fellowmen or that fortune can do for him, will 
suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of human 
happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be ; his only 
resources are his sensual appetite — a cozy and cheerful 
family life at the most — low company and vulgar pastime ; 
even education, on the whole, can avail little, if anything, 
for the enlargement of his horizon. For the highest, 
most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind, 
however much our youth may deceive us on this point ; and 
the pleasures of the mind turned chiefly on the powers of 
the mind. It is clear, then, that our happiness depends in 
a great degree upon what we are, upon our individuality, 
while lot or destiny is generally taken to mean only what 
we have, or our reputation. Our lot in this sense, may 
improve ; but we do not ask much of \t if we are inwardly 
rich : on the other hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull 
blockhead, to his last hour, even though he were sur- 
rounded bv hourisin paradise, This is why Goethe* in the 



ft TETE WISDOM OF LIFE 

West-ostlicher Divan, says that eyery man, whether h* 
occupy a low position in life, or emerges as its victor, 
testifies to personality as the greatest factor in happiness : 

" Volk und Kneclit und Ueberwinder 
Sie gestehen, zu jeder Zeit, 
Hochstes Gliick der Erdenkinder 
Sei nur die Personlichkeit." 

Everything confirms the fact that the subjective element 
in life is incomparably more important for our happiness 
and pleasure than the objective, from such sayings as 
''Hunger is the best sauce/ 7 and "Youth and age cannot live 
together," up to the life of the genius and the saint. 
Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may 
really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing 
king. A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the 
enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect 
clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a 
moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience 
— these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make 
up for or replace. For what a man is in himself, what 
accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give 
or take away, is obviously more essential to him than 
everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what 
he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man 
in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own 
thoughts and fancies, while no amount or diversity of 
social pleasure, theaters, excursions and amusements, can 
ward off boredom from a dullard. A good, temperate, 
gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances, 
while a covetous, envious and malicious man, even if he 
be the richest in the world, goes miserable. Nay more ; 
to one who has the constant delight of a special individ- 
uality, with a high degree of intellect, most of the 
pleasures which are run after by mankind are perfectly 
superfluous ; they are even a trouble and a burden. And 
so Horace says of himself, that, however many are deprived 
of the fancy goods of life, there is one at least who can 
live without them : 

" Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrbena sigilla, tabellas, 
Argentum, vestes Gaetulo rnurice tinctas 
Sunt qui non habeant, est qui Don curat habere; * 



DIVISION OF ThS SUBJECT. 7 

ana when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread 
out for sale, he exclaimed : "How much there is in the 
world that I do not want." 

So the first and most essential element in our life's 
happiness is what we are, our personality, if for no other 
reason than that it is a constant factor coming into play 
under all circumstances; besides, unlike the blessings 
which are described under the other two neads, it is not 
the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us , and, 
so far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to 
the merely relative worth of the other two. The conse- 
quence of this is that it is much more difficult than people 
commonly suppose to get a hold on a man from without. 
But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in and claims 
its rights, and before its influence physical and mental 
advantages gradually waste away. Moral character alone 
remains inaccessible to it. In view of the destructive 
effect of time, it seems, indeed, as if the blessings named 
under the other two heads, of which time cannot directly 
rob us, were superior to those of the first. Another advan- 
tage might be claimed for them, namely, that being in 
their very nature objective and external, they are attain- 
able, and every one is presented with the possibility, at 
least, of coming into possession of them ; while what is 
subjective is not open to us to acquire, but making its 
entry by a kind of divine right,it remains for life, immutable, 
inalienable, an inexorable doom. Let me quote those 
lines in which Goethe describes how an unalterable destiny 
is assigned to every man at the hour of his birth, so that 
he can develop only in the lines laid down for him, as it 
were, by the conjunctions of the stars ; and how the 
Sibyl and the prophets declare that himself a man can 
never escape, nor any power of time avail to change the 
path on which his life is cast : 

" Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen, 
Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten, 
Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen, 
Nach dem Gesetz, wonacli du angetreten. 
So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen. 
So sagten schon Sibyllen und Propheten; 
Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt 
Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.* 

The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is 



S THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal 
qualities we possess, and accordingly to follow such pur- 
suits only as will call them into play, to strive after the 
kind of perfection of which they admit and to avoid every 
other ; consequent!}', to choose the position, occupation 
and manner of life which are most suitable for their 
development. 

Imagine a man endowed with Herculean strength who is 
compelled bj circumstances to follow a sedentary occupa- 
tion, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for ex- 
ample, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding 
quite other powers, and just those which he has not got, 
compelled, that is, to leave unused the powers in which he 
is pre-eminently strong ; a man placed like this will never 
feel happy all his life through. Even more miserable will 
be the lot of the man with intellectual powers of a very 
high order, who has to lea^e them undeveloped and un- 
employed, in the pursuit of a calling which does not 
require them, some bodily labor, perhaps, for which his 
strength is insufficient. Still, in a case of this kind, it 
should be our care, especially in youth, to avoid the preci- 
pice of presumption, and not ascribe to ourselves a super- 
fluity of power which is not there. 

Since the blessings described under the first head 
decidedly outweigh ttiose contained under the other two, 
it is manifestly a wiser course to aim at the maintenance 
of our health and the cultivation of our faculties, than at 
the amassing of wealth ; but this must not be mistaken as 
meaning that we should neglect to acquire an adequate 
supply of the necessaries of life. Wealth, in the strict sense 
of the word, that is, great superfluity, can do little for our 
happiness ; and many rich people feel unhappy just because 
they are without any true mental culture or knowledge, 
and consequently have no objective interests which would 
qualify them for intellectual occupations. For beyond 
the satisfaction of some real and natural necessities, all 
that the possession of wealth can achieve has a very small 
influence upon our happiness, in the proper sense of the 
word ; indeed, wealth rather disturbs it, because the preser- 
vation of property entails a great many unavoidable 
anxieties. And still men are a thousand times more 
intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though 
it is quite certain that what a » man is contributes much 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT, 9 

more to his happiness than what he has. So you may see 
many a man, as industrious as an ant, ceaselessly occupied 
from morning to night in the endeavor to increase his heap 
of gold. Beyond the narrow horizon of means to this end, 
lie knows nothing ; his mind is a blank, and consequently 
unsusceptible to any other influence. The highest pleas- 
ures, those of the intellect, are to him inaccessible, and he 
tries in vain to replace them by the fleeting pleasures of 
sense in which he indulges, lasting but a brief hour and at 
tremendous cost. And if he is lucky, his struggles result 
in his having a really great pile of gold, which he leaves to 
his heir, either to make it still larger, or to squander it in 
extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a 
sense of earnestness and an air of importance, is just as 
silly as many another which has a fool's cap for its 
symbol. 

What a man has in himself is, then, the chief element 
in his happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little, 
most of those who are placed beyond the struggle with, 
penury, feel at bottom quite as unhappy as those who are 
still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant, their imagi- 
nation dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to the 
company of those like them — for similis simili gaudet — 
where they make common pursuit of pastime and enter- 
tainment, consisting for the most part in sensual pleasure, 
amusement of every kind, and finally, in excess and 
libertinism. A young man of rich family enters upon life 
with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an 
incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance ; 
and why ? Simply because, here too, the mind is empty 
and void, and so the man is bored with existence. He was 
sent forth into the world outwardly rich but inwardly 
poor, and his vain endeavor was to make his external 
wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to 
obtain everything from without, like an old man who seeks 
to strengthen himself as King David or Marechal de Eetz 
tried to do. And so in the end one who is inwardly poor 
comes to be also poor outwardly. 

I need not insist upon the importance of the other two 
kinds of blessings which make up the happiness of human 
life ; nowadays the value of possessing them is too well 
known to require advertisement. The third class, it is 
crue, may seem, compared with the second, of a very 



10 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

ethereal character, as it consists only of other people's 
opinions. Still every one lias to strive for reputation, that 
is to say, a good name. Rank, on the other hand, should 
be aspired to only by those who serve the state, and fame 
by very few indeed. In any case, reputation is looked 
upon as a priceless treasure, and fame as the most precious 
of all the blessings a man can attain — the Golden Fleece, 
as it were, of the elect : while only fools will prefer rank 
to property. The second and third classes, moreover, are 
reciprocally cause and effect ; so far that is, as Petronius' 
maxim, habes habeberis, is true ; and conversely, the favor 
of others, in all its forms, often puts us in the way of get- 
ting what we want. 



CHAPTER II. 

PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN" IS. 

We have already seen, in general, that what a man is 
contributes much more to his happiness than what he has 
or how he is regarded by others. What a man is, and so 
what he has in his own person, is always the chief thing to 
consider; for his individuality accompanies him always 
and everywhere, and gives its color to all his experiences. 
In every kind of enjoyment for instance, the pleasure de- 
pends principally upon the man himself. Every one admits 
this in regard to physical, and how much truer it is of in- 
tellectual pleasure. When we use that English expression, 
" to enjoy one's self," we are employing a very striking and 
appropriate phrase; for observe — one says, not "he enjoys 
Paris," but "he enjoys himself in Paris/'' To a man 
possessed of an ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is 
like delicate wine in a mouth made bitter with gall. 
Therefore, in the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less 
depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which 
it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our general 
susceptibility. What a man is and has in himself — in a 
word, personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate 
and direct factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is 
mediate and indirect, and its influence can be neutralized 
and frustrated ; but the influence of personality never. 
This is why the envy which personal qualities excite is the 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN 18. H 

most implacable of all — as it is also the most carefully 
dissembled. 

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever 
present and lasting element in all we do or suffer ; our in- 
dividuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every 
moment of our life : all other influences are temporal, 
incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance 
and change. This is why Aristotle says : " It is not wealth 
but character that lasts."* And just for the same reason 
we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us 
entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon 
ourselves ; for fortune may always change, but not charac- 
ter. Therefore, subjective blessings — a noble nature, a 
capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well- 
constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens 
sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important ele- 
ments in happiness ; so that we should be more intent en 
promoting and preserving such qualities than on the pos- 
session of external wealth and external honor. 

And of all these, the one which makes us the most 
directly happy is a genial flow of good spirits ; for this 
excellent quality is its own immediate reward. The man 
who is cheerful and merry has always a good reason for 
being so — the fact, namely, that he is so. There is noth- 
ing which, like this quality, can so completely replace the 
loss of every other blessing. If you know any one who is 
young, handsome, rich and esteemed, and you want to 
know, further, if he is happy, ask, Is he cheerful and 
genial ? — and if he is, what does it matter whether he is 
young or old, straight or humpbacked, poor or rich ? — he 
is happy. In my early days I once opened an old book and 
found these words : " If you laugh a great deal, you are 
happy ; if you cry a great deal, you are unhappy" — a very 
simple remark, no doubt ; but just because it is so simple 
I have never been able to forget it, even though it is in the 
last degree a truism. So if cheerfulness knocks at our 
door, we should throw it wide open, for it never comes in- 
opportunely ; instead of that, we often make scruples about 
letting it in. We want to be quite sure that we have every 
reason to be contented, then we are afraid that cheerful- 

*Eth. Eud., vii. 2. 37:— 
tj yap q>v6i$ fteftviov, ov vd xfiTJ/^ara, 



12 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

ness of spirits may interfere with serious reflections or 
weighty cares. Cheerfulness is a . direct and immediate 
gain — the very coin, as it were, of happines, and not, like 
all else, merely a check upon the bank ; for it alone makes 
us immediately happy in the present moment, and that is 
the highest blessing for beings like us, whose existence is 
but an infinitesimal moment between two eternities. To 
s cure and promote this feeling of cheerfulness should 
be the supreme aim of all our endeavors after happiness. 
Now it is certain that nothing contributes so little to 
cheerfulness as riches, or so much, as health. Is it not in 
the lower classes, the so-called working classes, more 
especially those of them who live in the country, that we 
see cheerful and contented faces? and is it not among 
the rich, the upper classes, that we find faces full of ill- 
humor and vexation ? Consequently we should try as much 
as possible to maintain a high degree of health ; for cheer- 
fulness is the very flower of it. I need hardly say what 
one must do to be healthy — avoid every kind of excess, all 
violent and unpleasant emotion, all mental overstrain, 
take daily exercise in the open air, cold baths and such like 
hygienic measures. For without a proper amount of daily 
exercise no one can remain healthy ; all the processes of life 
demand exercise for the due performance of their functions, 
exercise not only of the parts more immediately concerned, 
but also of the whole body. For, as Aristotle rightly 
says, "Life is movement ;" it is its very essence. Cease- 
less and rapid motiongoes on in everypart of the organism. 
The heart, with its complicated double systole and diastole, 
beats strongly and untiringly ; with twenty-eight beats it 
has to drive the whole of the blood through arteries, veins 
and capillaries ; the lungs pump like a steam-engine, with- 
out intermission ; the intestines are always in peristaltic 
action ; the glands are all constantly absorbing and secret- 
ing ; even the brain has a double motion of its own, with 
every beat of the pulse and every breath we draw. When 
people can get no exercise at all, as is the case with the 
countless numbers who are condemned to a sedentary 
life, there is a glaring and fatal disproportion between out- 
ward inactivity and inner tumult. For this ceaseless in- 
ternal motion requires some external counterpart, and the 
want of it produces effects like those of emotion whieh we 
are obliged to suppress. Even trees must be shaken by 



PERSONALITY, OR WtiAT A MAN 18. l£ 

the wind, if they are to thrive. The rule which finds 
its application here may be most briefly expressed in Latin ; 
omnis motus, quo celerior, eo magis motus. 

How much our happiness depends upon our spirits, and 
these again upon our state of health, may be seen by com- 
paring the influence which the same external circumstances 
or events have upon us when we are well and strong with 
the effect which they have when we are depressed and 
troubled with ill-health. It is not what things are 
objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in 
our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the 
reverse. As Epictetus says, " Men are not influenced by 
things but by their thoughts about things." And, in gen- 
eral, nine-tenths of our happiness depends upon health 
alone. With health, everything is a source of pleasure ; 
without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable ; 
even the other personal blessings — a great mind, a happy 
temperament — are degraded and dwarfed for want of it. 
So it is really with good reason that, when two people 
meet, the first thing they do is to inquire after each other's 
health, and to express the hope that it is good ; for good 
health is by far the most important element in human 
happiness. It follows from all this that the greatest of 
follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness, 
whatever it may be, for gain, advancement, learning or 
fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures. 
Everything else should rather be postponed to it. 

But however much health may contribute to that flow of 
good spirits which is so essential to our happiness, good 
spirits do not entirely depend upon health ; for a man may 
be perfectly sound in his physique and still possess a 
melancholy temperament and be generally given up to sad 
thoughts. The ultimate cause of this is undoubtedly to be 
found in innate, and therefore unalterable, physical con- 
stitution, especially in the more or less normal relation 
of a man's sensitiveness to his muscular and vital energy. 
Abnormal sensitiveness produces inequality of spirits, a 
predominating melancholy, with periodical fits of unre- 
strained liveliness. A genius is one whose nervous power 
or sensitiveness is largely in excess ; as Aristotle* has very 
correctly observed, " Men distinguished in philosophy, 

* Probl. xxx. ep. 1 



H THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

politics, poetry or art, appear to be all of a melancholy 
temperament." This is doubtless the passage which Cicero 
lias in his mind when lie says, as he often does, "Aristoteles 
ait omnes ingemosos melancholicos esse/'* Shakespeare has 
very neatly expressed this radical and innate diversity ci 
temperament in those lines in "The Merchant of Venice :" 

" Nature has framed strange fellows in her time ; 
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes 
And laugh, like parrots at a bag-piper ; 
And others of such vinegar aspect, 
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, 
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. " f 

This is the difference which Plato draws between 
evxoXoS and SvtixoXos — the man of easy, and the man of 
difficult disposition — in proof of which he refers to the 
varying degrees of susceptibility which different people 
show to pleasurable and painful impressions ; so that one 
man will laugh at what makes another despair. As a rule, 
the stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions, 
the weaker is the susceptibility to pleasant ones, and vice 
versa. If it is equally possible for an event to turn out 
well or ill, the 6v6xoA.os will be annoyed or grieved if the 
issue is unfavorable, and will not rejoice, should it be 
happy. On the other hand, the evxo^oi, will neither worry 
nor fret over an unfavorable issue, but rejoice if it turns 
out well. If the one is successful in nine out of ten 
undertakings, he will not be pleased, but rather anno} T ed 
that one has miscarried ; while the other, if only a single 
one succeeds, will manage to find consolation in the fact 
and remain cheerful. But here is another instance of the 
truth, that hardly any evil is entirely without its compen- 
sation ; for the misfortunes and sufferings which the 
8v6xo\oi, that is, people of gloomy and anxious character, 
have to overcome, are, on the whole, more imaginary and 
therefore less real than those which befall the gay and 
careless ; for a man who paints everything black, who 
constantly fears the worst and takes measures accordingly, 
will not be disappointed so often in this world, as one who 
always looks upon the bright side of things. And when a 
morbid affection of the nerves, or a derangement of the 

* Tusc. i. f 32, 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 15 

digestive organs, plays into the hand of an innate tendency 
to gloom, this tendency may reach such a height that 
permanent discomfort produces a weariness of life. So 
arises an inclination to suicide, which even the most 
trivial unpleasantness may actually bring about ; nay, 
when the tendency attains its worst form, it may be 
occasioned by nothing in particular, but a man may resolve 
to put an end to his existence, simply because he is per- 
manently unhappy, and then coolly and firmly carry out 
his determination ; as may be seen by the way in which 
the sufferer, when placed under supervision, as he usually 
is, eagerly waits to seize the first unguarded moment, 
when, without a shudder, without a struggle or recoil, he 
may use the now natural and welcome means of effect- 
ing his release.* Even the healthiest, perhaps even the 
most cheerful man, may resolve upon death under certain 
circumstances; when, for instance, his sufferings, or his 
fears of some inevitable misfortune, reach such a pitch as 
to outweigh the terrors of death. The only difference lies 
in the degree of suffering necessary to bring about the 
fatal act, a degree which will be high in the case of a 
cheerful, and low in that of a gloomy man. The greater 
the melancholy, the lower need the degree be : in the end, 
it may even sink to zero. But if a man is cheerful, and 
his spirits are supported by good health, it requires a 
high degree of suffering to make him lay hands upon 
himself. There are countless steps in the scale between 
the two extremes of suicide, the suicide which springs 
merely from a morbid intensification of innate gloom, and 
the suicide of the healthy and cheerful man, who has 
entirely objective grounds for putting an end to his 
existence. 

Beauty is partly an affair of health. It may be 
reckoned as a personal advantage ; though it does not, 
properly speaking, contribute directly to our happiness. 
It does so indirectly, by impressing other people ; and it is 
no unimportant advantage, even in man. Beauty is an 
open letter of recommendation, predisposing the heart to 
favor the person who presents it. As is well said in those 
lines of Homer, the gift of beauty is not lightly to be 

* For a detailed description of this condition of mind cf. Esquirol 
Pes maladies mentaleg. 



16 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

thrown away, that glorious gift which none can bestow 
save the gods alone — 

ovroi anofSXrjT^ l6rl 0£g3V epiuvdia 8 (Spa, 

066a H8V avrol 8gj6iv, shgjv 8'ovk av nS eXoiro.* 

The most general survey shows us that the two foes oi 
human happiness are pain and -boredom. We may go 
further, and say that in the degree in which we are fortu- 
nate enough to get away from the one, we approach the 
other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscil- 
lation between the two. The reason of this is that each of 
these two poles stands in a double antagonism to the other, 
external or objective, and inner or subjective. Needy sur- 
roundings and poverty produce pain ; while, if a man is 
more than well off, he is bored. Accordingly, while the 
lower classes are engaged in a ceaseless struggle with need, 
in other words, with pain, the upper carry on a constant 
and often desperate battle with boredom, f The inner or 
subjective antagonism arises from the fact that, in the 
individual, susceptibility to pain varies inversely with sus- 
ceptibility to boredom, because susceptibility is directly 
proportionate to mental power. Let me explain. A dull 
mind is, as a rule associated with dull sensibilities, nerves 
which no stimulus can affect, a temperament, in short, 
which does not feel pain or anxiety very much, however 
great or terrible it may be. Now, intellectual dullness is 
at the bottom of that vacuity of soul which is stamped on 
so many faces, a state of mind which betrays itself by a 
constant and lively attention to all the trivial circumstances 
in the external world. This is the true source of boredom 
— a continual panting after excitement, in order to have a 
pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy 
them. The kind of things people choose for this purpose 
shows that they are not very particular, as witness the 
miserable pastimes they have recourse to, and their ideas 
of social pleasure and conversation ; or, again, the number 
of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out of the 

*" Iliad "3, 65. 

+ And the extremes meet ; for the lowest state of civilization, 
a nomad or wandering life, finds its counterpart in the highest, 
where every one is at times a tourist. The earlier stage was a case oi 
necessity ; the latter is a remedy for boredom. 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN 18. I? 

window. It is mainly because of this inner vacuity of 
soul that people go in quest of society, diversion, amuse- 
ment, luxury of every sort, which lead many to extrava- 
gance and misery. Nothing is so good a protection 
against such misery as inward wealth, the wealth of the 
mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves 
for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thought ! 
finding ever new material to work upon in the multifarious 
phenomena of self and nature, and able and ready to form 
new combinations of them — there you have something 
that invigorates the mind, and apart from moments of 
relaxation, sets it far above the reach of boredom. 

But, on the other hand, this high degree of intelligence 
is rooted in a high degree of susceptibility, greater strength 
of will, greater passionateness ; and from the union of 
these qualities comes an increased capacity for emotion, an 
enhanced sensibility to all mental and even bodily pain, 
greater impatience of obstacles, greater resentment of in- 
terruption — all of which tendencies are augmented by the 
power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole 
range of thought, including what is disagreeable. This 
applies, in varying degrees, to every step in the long scale 
of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest 
genius that ever lived. Therefore the nearer any one is, 
either from a subjective or from an objective point of view, 
to one of these sources of suffering in human life, the 
farther he is from the other. And so a man's natural 
bent will lead him to make his objective world conform to 
his subjective as much as possible ; that is to say, he will 
take the greatest measures against that form of suffering 
to which he is most liable. The wise man will, above all, 
strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and 
leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few 
encounters as may be ; and so, after a little experience of 
his so-called fellow-men, he will elect to live in retirement, 
or even, if he is a man of great intellect, in solitude. For 
the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from 
other people, the less, indeed, other people can be to him. 
This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a 
man unsocial. True, it' quality of intellect could be made 
up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in 
the great world ; but, unfortunately, a hundred fools 
together will not make one wise man. 



18 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

But the individual who stands at, the other end of the 
scale is no sooner free from the pangs of need than he en- 
deavors to get pastime and society at any cost, taking up 
with the first person he meets, and avoiding nothing so 
much as himself. For in solitude, where every one is 
thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in him- 
self comes to light; the fool in fine raiment groans under 
the burden of his miserable personality, a burden which he 
can never throw off, while the man of talent peoples the 
waste places with his animating thoughts. Seneca de- 
clares that folly is its own burden — omnis stultitia labor at 
fastidio sui—& very true saying, with which may be com- 
pared the words of Jesus, the son of Sirach, " The life of a 
fool is worse than death/'* And, as a rule, it will be found 
that a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is in- 
tellectually poor and generally vulgar. For one's choice 
in this world does not go much beyond solitude on one 
side and vulgarity on the other. It is said that the most 
sociable of all people are the negroes; and they are at the 
bottom of the scale in intellect. I remember reading 
once in a French paperf that the blacks in North America, 
whether free or unslaved, a r e fond of shutting themselves 
up in large numbers in the smallest space, because they 
cannot have too much of one another's snub-nosed 
company. 

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the 
organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the 
body: and leisure, that is, the time one has for the free 
enjoyment of one's consciousness or individuality, is the 
fruit or produce of the rest of existence^ which is in 
general only labor and effort. But what does most 
people's leisure yield? — boredom and dullness; except of 
course, when it is occupied with sensual pleasure or folly. 
How little such leisure is worth may be seen in the way in 
which it is spent: and, as Ariosto observes, how miserable 
are the idle hours of ignorant men! — ozio hmgo d'uomini 
ignoranti. Ordinary people think merely how they shall 
spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it. The 
reason why people of limited intellect are apt to be bored 
is that their intellect is absolutely nothing more than the 

*Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11. \Le Commerce, Oct. 19tli, 1837- 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN 18. 19 

means by which the motive power of the will is put into 
force: and whenever there is nothing particular to set the 
will in motion, it rests, and their intellect takes a holiday, 
because, equally with the will, it requires something ex- 
ternal to bring it into play. The result is an awful 
stagnation of whatever power a man has — in a word, 
boredom. To counteract this miserable feeling, men run 
to trivialities which please for the moment they are taken 
up, hoping thus to engage the will in order to rouse it to 
action, and so set the intellect in motion; for it is the 
latter which has to give effect to these motives of the will. 
Compared with real and natural motives, these are but as 
paper money to coin; for their value is only arbitrary — 
card games and the like, which have been invented for 
this very purpose. And if there is nothing else to be done, 
a man will twirl his thumbs or beat the devil's tattoo; or 
a cigar may be a welcome substitute for exercising his 
brains. Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of 
society is card-playing,* and it is the gauge of its value, 
and an outward sign that it is bankrupt in thought. 
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they dea t 
cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots! But 
I do not wish to be unjust; so let me remark that it mav 
certainly be said in defense of card-playing that it is a 
preparation for the world and for business life, because 
one learns thereby how to make a clever use of fortuitous 
but unalterable circumstances (cards, in this case), and 
to get as much out of them as one can: and to do this a 
man must learn a little dissimulation, and how to put a 
good face upon a bad business. But, on the other hand, 
it is exactly for this reason that card-playing is so demoral- 
izing, since the whole object of it is to employ every kind 
of trick and machination in order to win what belongs to 
another. And a habit of this sort, learned at the card-table, 
strikes root and pushes its way into practical life; and in 
the affairs of every day a man gradually comes to regard 
meum and tuum in much the same light as cards, and to 
consider that he may use to the utmost whatever 

translator's Note. — Card-playing to this extent is now, no doubts 
a thing of the past, at any rate among the nations of northern 
Europe. The present fashion is rather in favor of a dilettante in- 
terest in art or literature. 



20 THE WISDOM OF LIFBK 

advantages he possesses, so long as he does not come with- 
in the arm of the law. Examples of what I mean are of 
daily occurrence in mercantile life. Since, then, leisure is 
the flower, or rather the fruit, of existence, as it puts a 
man into possession of himself, those are happy indeed 
who possess something real in themselves. But what do 
you get from most people's leisure? — only a good-for- 
nothing fellow, who is terribly bored and a burden to him- 
self. Let us, therefore, rejoice, dear brethren, for "we are 
not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." 

Further, as no laud is so well off as that which requires 
few imports, or none at all, so the happiest man is one who 
has enough in his own inner wealth, and requires little or 
nothing from outside for his maintenance, for imports are 
expensive things, reveal dependence, entail danger, occa- 
sion trouble, and, when all is said and done, are a poor sub- 
stitute for home produce. No man ought to expect much 
from others, or, in general, from the external world. What 
one human being can be to another is not a very great 
deal : in the end every one stands alone, and the important 
thing is who it is that stands alone. Here, then, is 
another application of the general truth which Goethe 
recognizes in " Dichtungund Wahrheit " (Bk. III.), that in 
everything a man has ultimately to appeal to himself ; or, 
as Goldsmith puts it in " The Traveller :" 

" Still to ourselves in every place consign'd 
Our own felicity we make or find." 

Himself is the source of the best and most a man can be 
or achieve. The more this is so — the more a man finds his 
sources of pleasure in himself — the happier he will be. 
Therefore, it is with great truth that Aristotle* says, '-To 
be happy means to be' self-sufficient." For all other sources 
of happiness are in their nature most uncertain, precarious, 
fleeting, the sport of chance ; and so even under the most 
favorable circumstances they can easily be exhausted ; nay, 
this is unavoidable, because they are not always within 
reach, And in old age these sources of happiness must 
necessttrilv dry up : love leaves us then, and wit, desire to 
travel, delight in horses, aptitude for so cial intercourse; 

* Eth. Eud., viL 2. 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 21 

friends and relations, too, are taken from us by death. 
Then more than ever, it depends upon what a man has in 
himself ; for this will stick to him longest and at any period 
of life it is the only genuine and lasting source of happi- 
ness. There is not much to be got anywhere in the 
world. It is filled with misery and pain ; and if a man 
escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner. 
Nay more ; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, 
and folly makes the most noise. Fate is cruel, and man- 
kind pitiable. In such a world as this, a man who is rich 
in himself is like a bright, warm, happy room at Christmas- 
tide, while without are the frost and snow of a December 
night. Therefore, without doubt, the happiest destiny on 
earth is to have the rare gift of a rich individuality, and, 
more especially, to be possessed of a good endowment of 
intellect ; this is the happiest destiny, though it may not be, 
after all, a very brilliant one. There was great wisdom in 
that remark which Queen Christina of Sweden made, in her 
nineteenth year, about Descartes, who had then lived for 
twenty years in the deepest solitude in Holland, and, apart 
from report, was known to her only by a single essay : " M. 
Descartes," she said, "is the happiest of men, and his con- 
dition seems to me much to be envied." 5 " Of course, as was 
the case with Descartes, external circumstances must be 
favorable enough to allow a man to be master of his life 
and happiness ; or, as we read in Ecclesiastesf — " Wisdom 
is good together with an inheritance, and profitable unto 
them that see the sun." The man to whom nature and f;ite 
have granted the blessing of wisdom, will be most anxious 
and careful to keep open the fountains of happiness which 
he has in himself ; and for this, independence and leisure 
are necessary. To obtain them, he will be willing to 
moderate his desire* and harbor his resources, all the more 
because he is not, like others, restricted to the external 
world for his pleasures. So he will not be misled by expec- 
tations of office, or money, or the favor and applause of 
his fellow-men, into surrendering himself in order to con- 
form to low desires and vulgar tastes ; nay, in such a case 
he will follow the advice that Horace gives in his epistle 

* "Vie de Descartes/' par Baillet. Liv. vii., ch. 10. 
f vii. 12. 



22 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

to Maecenas.* It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the 
inner for the outer man, to give the whole or the greater 
part of one's quiet leisure and independence for splendor, 
rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what Goethe did. 
My good luck drew me quite in the other direction. 

The truth which I am insisting upon here, the truth, 
namely, that the chief source of human happiness is in- 
ternal, is confirmed by that most accurate observation of 
Aristotle in the " Xichomchen Ethics, "f that every pleasure 
presupposes some sort of activity, the application of some 
sort of power, without which it cannot exist. The doctrine 
of Aristotle's, that a man's happiness consists in the free 
exercise of his highest faculties, is also enunciated by 
Stobaeus in his exposition of the Peripatetic philoso- 
phy :| "happiness," he says, ''means vigorous and success- 
ful activity in all your undertakings;" and he explains that 
by vigour {dpezrf) he means mastery in any thing, whatever 
it be. Now, the original purpose of those forces with which 
nature has endowed man is to enable him to struggle against 
the difficulties which beset him on all sides. But if this 
struggle comes to an end, his unemployed forces become 
a burden to him ; and he has to set to work and play with 
them — use them, I mean, for no purpose at all, beyond 
avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom, to 
which he is at once exposed. It is the upper classes, people 
of wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom. 
Lucretius long ago described their miserable state, and 
the truth of his description may be still recognized to-day, 
in the life of every great capital — where the rich man is 
seldom in his own halls, because it bores him to be there- 
and still he returns thither because he is no better off out- 
side — or else he is away in post-haste to his house in the 
country, as if it were on fire ; and he is no sooner arrived 
there, than he is bored again, and seeks to forget every- 
thing in sleep, or else hurries back to town once more. 

" Exit saepe foras inagnis ex aedibus ille, 
Esse doini quern pertaesum est, subitoque reventat ; 
Quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse. 

* Lib. 1., ep. 7, 
Nee somnuui plebis laudo, satur altilium, nee 
Otia divitiis Arabum liborrima muto. 

f i. 7 and vii. 13, 14. % Eel. eth. ii., ch. 7, 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAS IS. 23 

Currit, agens mannos, ad villain precipitanter, 
Auxiliuni tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans : 
Oscitat exteinplo, tetigit quuin limina villae ; 
Aut abit in somnuin gravis, atque oblivia quaerit ; 
Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit." * 

In their youth, such people must have had a superfluity 
of muscular and vital energy — powers which unlike those 
of the mind, cannot maintain their full degree of vigor 
very long; and in later years they either have no mental 
powers at all, or cannot develop any for want of employ- 
ment which would bring them into play; so that they are 
in a wretched plight. Will, however, they still possess, 
for this is the only power that is inexhaustible; and they 
try to stimulate their will by passionate excitement, such as 
games of chance for high stakes — undoubtedly a most de- 
grading form of vice. And one may say generally that if 
a man finds himself with nothing to do, he is sure to choose 
some amusement suited to the kind of power in which he 
excels — bowls, it may be, or chess; hunting or painting; 
horse-racing or music; cards, or poetry, heraldry, philosophy, 
or some other dilettante interest. We might classify these 
interests methodically, by reducing them to expressions of 
the three fundamental powers, the factors, that is to say, 
which go to make up the physiological constitution of man; 
and further, by considering these powers by themselves, 
and apart from any of the definite aims which they may sub- 
serve, and simply as affording three sources of possible 
pleasure, out of which every man will choose what suits him, 
according as he excels in one direction or another. 

First of all come the pleasures of vital energy, of food, 
drink, digestion, rest and sleep; and there are parts of the 
world where it can be said that these are characteristic and 
national pleasures. Secondly, there are the pleasures of 
muscular energy, such as walking, running, wrestling, 
dancing, fencing, riding and similar athletic pursuits, 
which sometimes take the form of sport, and sometimes of 
a military life, and real warfare. Thirdly, there are the 
pleasures of sensibility, such as observation, thought, feel- 
ing, or a taste ror poetry or culture, music, learning, reading, 
meditation, invention, philosophy and the like. As regards 
the value, relative worth and duration of each of these 
kinds of pleasure, a great deal might be said, which, how- 

* 111. 1073 



24 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

ever, I leave the reader to supply. But every one will see 
that the nobler the power which is brought into play, the 
greater will be the pleasure which it gives; for pleasure al- 
ways involves the use of one's own powers, and happiness 
consists in a frequent repetition of pleasure. No one will 
deny that in this respect the pleasures of sensibility occupy 
a higher place than either of the other two fundamental 
kinds; which exist in an equal, nay, in a greater degree in 
brutes; it is his preponderating amount of sensibility which 
distinguishes man from other animals. Now, our mental 
powers are forms of sensibility, and tnerefore a preponder- 
ating amount of it makes us capable of that kind of pleasure 
which has to do with mind, so-called intellectual pleasure; 
and the more sensibility predominates, the greater the 
pleasure will be. * 

*Xature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical 
and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vege- 
table, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world, 
where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first very weak, and 
only after many intermediate stages attainiug its last great develop- 
ment in man, whose intellect is Nature's crowning point; the goal of 
all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works. And 
even within the range of the human intellect, there are a great many 
observable differences of degree, and it is very seldom that intellect 
reaches its highest point, intelligence properly so-called, which in 
this narrow and strict sense of the word, is nature's most consummate 
product, and so the rarest and most precious thing of which the 
world can boast. The highest product of Nature is the clearest 
degree of consciousness, in which the world mirrors itself more plain- 
ly and completely than anywhere else. A man endowed with this 
form of intelligence is in possession of what is noblest and best on 
earth; and accordingly, he has a source of pleasure in comparison 
with which all others are small. From his surroundings he asks 
nothing but leisure for the free enjoyment of what he has got, time, 
as it were, to polish his diamond. All other pleasures that are not 
of the intellect are of a lower kind; for they are, one and all, move- 
ments of will — desires, hopes, fears and ambitions, no matter to what 
directed: they are always satisfied at the cost of pain, and in the case 
of ambition, generally with more or less of illusion. With intel- 
lectual pleasure, on the other hand, truth becomes clearer and clearer. 
In the realm of intelligence pain has no power. Knowledge is all in 
all. Further, intellectual pleasures are accessible entirely and only 
through the medium of the intelligence and are limited by its capacity. 
For all the wit there is in the world is useless to him who has none. 
Still this advantage is accompanied by a substantial disadvantage; for 
the whole of Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence 
comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest de- 
gree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point. 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 25 

The normal, ordinary man takes a vivid interest in any- 
thing only in so far as it excites his will, that is to say, is 
a matter of personal interest to him. But constant excite- 
ment of the will is never an unmixed good, to say the least; 
in other words, it involves pain. Card-playing, that uni- 
versal occupation of ''good society" everywhere, is a device 
for providing this kind of excitement, and that, too, by 
means of interests so small as to produce slightand momen- 
tary, instead of real and permanent, pain. Card-playing 
is, in fact, a mere tickling of the will.* 

On the other hand, a man of powerful intellect is capable 
of taking a vivid interest in things in the way of mere 
knowledge, with no admixture of will; nay, such an interest 
is a necessity to him. It places him in a sphere where pain 
is an alien, a diviner air where the gods live serene: 

Qeol pela £,&)ovteS.\ 

Look on these two pictures — the life of the masses, one 
long, dull record of struggle and effort entirely devoted to 
the petty interests of personal welfare, to misery in all its 
forms, a life beset by intolerable boredom as soon as ever 
those aims are satisfied and the man is thrown back upon 
himself, whence he can be roused again to some sort of move- 
ment only by the wild fire of passion. On the other side you 

* Vulgarity is, at bottom, the kind of consciousness in which the 
will completely predominates over the intellect, where the latter does 
nothing more than perform the service of its master, the will. There- 
fore, when the will makes no demands, supplies no motives, strong 
or weak, the intellect entirely loses its power, and the result is com- 
plete vacancy of mind. Now will without intellect is the most vul- 
gar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, 
who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he 
is made. This is the condition of mind called vulgarity, in which 
the only active elements are the organs of sense, and that small 
amount of intellect which is necessary for apprehending the data of 
sense. Accordingly, the vulgar man is constantly open to all sorts 
of impressions, and immediately perceives all the little trifling things 
that go on in his environment: the lightest whisper, the most trivial 
circumstance, is sufficient to rouse his attention; he is just like an 
animal. Such a man's mental condition reveals itself in his face, ia 
his whole exterior; and hence that vulgar, repulsive appearance, 
which is all the more offensive, if as is usually the case, his will— 
the only factor in his consciousness — is a base, selfish and altogether 
bad one. 

\ Odyssey IV., 805. 



26 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

have a man endowed with a high degree of mental power, 
leading an existence rich in thought and full of life and 
meaning, occupied by worthy and interesting objects as 
soon as ever he is free to give himself to them, bearing in 
himself a source of the noblest pleasure. What external 
promptings he wants come from the works of nature, and 
from the contemplation of human affairs and the achieve- 
ments of the great of all ages and countries, which are 
thoroughly appreciated by a man of this type alone, as 
being the only one who can quite understand and feel with 
them. And so it is for him alone that those great ones 
have really lived ; it is to him that they make their appeal ; 
the rest are but casual hearers who only half understand 
either them or their followers. Of course, this character- 
istic of the intellectual man implies that he has one more 
need than the others, the need of reading, observing, 
studying, meditating, practicing, the need, in short, of un- 
disturbed leisure. For, as Voltaire has very rightly said, 
" there are no real pleasures without real needs ;" and the 
need of them is why to such a man pleasures are accessible 
which are denied to others — the varied beauties of nature 
and art and literature. To heap these round people who 
do not want them and cannot appreciate them, is like ex- 
pecting gray hairs to fall in love. A man who is privi- 
leged in this respect leads two lives, a personal and ar_ 
intellectual life ; and the latter gradually comes to be 
looked upon as the true one, and the former as merely a 
means to it. Other people make this shallow, empty and 
troubled existence an end in itself. To the life of the in- 
tellect such a man will give the preference over all his 
other occupations : by the constant growth of insight and 
knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming 
work of art, will acquire a consistency, a permanent inten- 
sity, a unity which becomes ever more and more complete ; 
compared with which a life devoted to the attainment of 
personal comfort, a life that may broaden indeed, but can 
never be deepened, makes but a poor show : and yet, as I 
have said, people make this baser sort of existence an end 
in itself. 

The ordinary life of every day, so far as it is not moved 
by passion, is tedious and insipid ; and if it is so moved, 
it soon becomes painful. Those alone are happy whom 
nature has favored with some superfluity of intellect, some- 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS, tf 

thing beyond what is just ne3essary to carry out the be- 
hests of their will ; for it enables them to lead an intellect- 
ual life as well, a life unattended by pain and full of vivid 
interests. Mere leisure, that is to say, intellect unoccu- 
pied in the service of the will, is not of itself sufficient : 
there must be a real superfluity of power, set free from the 
service of the will and devoted to that of the intellect ; for, 
as Seneca says, ctium sine litter is mors est et vivi hominis 
sepultura — illiterate leisure is a form of death, a living 
tomb. Varying with the amount of the superfluity, there 
will be countless developments in this second life, the life 
of the mind ; it may be the mere collection and labeling 
of insects, birds, minerals, coins, or the highest achieve- 
ments of poetry and philosophy. The life of the mind is 
not only a protection, against boredom, it also wards olf the 
pernicious effects of boredom ; it keeps us from bad com- 
pany, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and 
extravagances which the man who places his happiness 
entirely in the objective world is sure to encounter. My 
philosophy, for instance, has never brought me in a six- 
pence ; but it has spared me many an expense. 

The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things 
external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, 
friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them 
or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happi- 
ness is destroyed. In other words, his center of gravity is 
not in himself ; it is constantly changing its place, with 
every wish and whim. If he is a man of means, one day it 
will be his house in the country, another buying horses, 
or entertaining friends, or traveling — a life, in short, of 
general luxury, the reason being that he seeks his pleasure 
in things outside him. Like one whose health and strength 
are gone, he tries to regain by the use of jellies and drugs, 
instead of by developing his own vital power, the true' 
source of what he has lost. Before proceeding to the oppo- 
site, let us compare with this .common type the man who 
comes midway between the two, endowed, it may be, not 
exactly with distinguished powers of mind, but with some- 
what more than the ordinary amount of intellect. He will 
take a dilettante interest in art, or devote his attention to 
some branch of science — botany, for example, or physics, 
astronomy, history, and find a great deal of pleasure in 
such studies, and amuse himself with them w r hen external 



28 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

sources of happiness are exhausted or fail to satisfy him 
any more. Of a man like this it may be said that hfs cen- 
ter of gravity is partly in himself. But a dilettante inter- 
est in art is a very different thing from creative activity ; 
and an amateur pursuit of science is apt to be superficial 
and not to penetrate to the heart of the matter. A man 
cannot entirely identify himself with such pursuits, or 
have his whole existence so completely rilled and permeated 
with them that he loses all interest in everything else. It 
is only the highest intellectual power, what we call genius, 
that attains to this degree of intensity, making all time 
and existence its theme, and striving to express its peculiar 
conception of the world, whether it contemplates life as 
the subject of poetry or of philosophy. Hence, undis- 
turbed occupation with himself, his own thoughts and 
works, is a matter of urgent necessity to such a man ; soli- 
tude is welcome, leisure is the highest good, and every- 
thing else is unnecessary, nay, even burdensome. 

{This is the only type of man of whom it can be said that 
his center of gravity is entirely in himself ; which explains 
why it is that people of this sort — and they are very rare — 
no matter how excellent their character may be, do not 
show that warm and unlimited interest in friends, family, 
and the community in general, of which others are so often 
capable ; for if they have only themselves they are not in- 
consolable for the loss of everything else. This gives an 
isolation to their character, which is all the more effective 
since other people never really quite satisfy them, as being, 
on the whole, of a different nature : nay more, since this 
difference is constantly forcing itself upon their notice, 
they get accustomed to move about among mankind as 
alieu beings, and in thinking of humanity in general, to 
say they instead of ive. 

So the conclusion we come to is that the man whom 
nature has endowed with intellectual wealth is the hap- 
piest ; so true it is that the subjective concerns us more 
than the objective ; for whatever the latter may be, it can 
work only indirectly, secondarily, and through the medium 
of the former — a truth finely expressed by Lucian : 

nXovroS 6 zr}$ tyvxyS ithovroS juovoS edrlv (xAtjQtjS 
TaXXa 8 } £X£i cczijv 7t\siova tobv kteccvgdv * 

* Epigramroata, 12, 



PERSONALITY. OR WHAT A MAN IS. 29 

—the wealth of the soul is the only true wealth, for with 
all other riches comes a bane even greater than they. The 
mau of inner wealth wants nothing from outside but the 
negative gift of undisturbed leisure, to develop and mature 
his intellectual faculties, that is, to enjoy his wealth ; in 
short, he wants permission to be himself, his whole life 
long, every day and every hour. If he is destined to impress 
the character of his mind upon the whole race, he has only 
3iie measure of happiness or unhappiness — to succeed or 
fail in perfecting his powers and completing his work. 
All else is of small consequence. Accordingly the greatest 
minds of all ages have set the highest value upon undis- 
turbed leisure, as worth, exactly as much as the man 
himself. " Happiuess appears to consist in leisure," says 
Aristotle ;* and Diogenes Laertius reports that " Socrates 
praised leisure as the fairest of all possessions." So, in the 
" Nichornachean Ethics/' Aristotle concludes that a life 
devoted to philosophy is the happiest ; or, as he says in 
the " Politics/'*! " the free exercise of any power, whatever 
it may be, is happiness/" This, again, tallies with what 
Goethe says in" Wilhelm Meister: " " the man who is born 
with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest 
happiness in using it/' 

But to be in possession of undisturbed leisure, is far 
from being the common lot ; nay, it is something alien to 
human nature, for the ordinary man's destiny is to spend 
life in procuring what is necessary for the subsistence of 
himself and his family ; he is a son of struggle and need, 
not a free intelligence. So people as a rule soon get tired 
of undisturbed leisure, and it becomes burdensome if there 
are no fictitious and forced aims to occupy it, play, pas- 
time and hobbies of every kind. For this very reason it is 
full of possible danger, and difficilis in otio quies is a true 
saying — it is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to 
do. On the other hand, a measure of intellect far surpass- 
ing the ordinary, is as unnatural as it is abnormal. But 
if it exists, and the man endowed with it is to be happy, 
he will want precisely that undisturbed leisure which the 
others find burdensome or pernicious ; for without it he is 
a Pegasus in harness, and consequently unhappy. If these 
two unnatural circumstances, external and internal, 

* Eth. Niclioiii. x. * f iv. 11. 



30 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

undisturbed leisure and great intellect, happen to coincide 
in the same person, it is a great piece of fortune ; and if 
fate is so far favorable, a man can lead the higher life, the 
life protected from the two opposite sources of human 
suffering, pain and boredom, from the painful struggle for 
existence, and the incapacity for enduring leisure (which 
is free existence itself) evils which may be escaped only 
by being mutually neutralized. 

But there is something to be said in opposition to this 
view. Great intellectual gifts mean an activity pre- 
eminently nervous in its character, and consequently a 
very high degree of susceptibility to pain in every form. 
Further, such gifts imply an intense temperament, larger 
and more vivid ideas, which, as the inseparable accom- 
paniment of great intellectual power, entail on its pos- 
sessor a corresponding intensity of the emotions, making 
them incomparably more violent than those to which the 
ordinary man is a prey. Now, there are more things in 
the world productive of pain than of pleasure. Again, a 
large endowment of intellect tends to estrange the man 
who has it from other people and their doings ; for the 
more a man has in himself, the less he will be able to find 
in them ; and the hundred things in which they take 
delight, he will think shallow and insipid. Here, then, 
perhaps, is another instance of that law of compensation 
which makes itself felt everywhere. How often one 
hears it said, and said, too, with some plausibility, that 
the narrow-minded man is at bottom the happiest, 
even though his fortune is unenviable. I shall make no 
attempt to forestall the reader's own judgment on this 
point ; more especially as Sophocles himself has given 
utterance to two diametrically opposite opinions : 

IIoXXg) to (ppoveiv svdaijuoviaS 



He says in one place — wisdom is the greatest part of happi- 
ness ; and again, in another passage, he declares that the 
life of the thoughtless is the most pleasant of all: 

} Ev ry cppovEiv yap jutjSZv tjSio'to's /3io$.\ 
* Antigone, 1347-8. \ Ajax, 554 



PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN 18. 31 

The philosophers of the Old Testament find themselves 
in a like contradiction. 

" The life of a fool is worse than death " * 

and — 

" In much wisdom is much grief ; 
And he that increaseth knowledge mcreaseth sorrow." 

I may remark, however, that a man who has no mental 
needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal 
amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called 
a philistine — an expression at first peculiar to the German 
language, a kind of slang term at the universities, after- 
ward used, by analogy, in a higher sense, though still in its 
original meaning, as denoting one who is not a " Son of the 
Muses." A philistine is and remains ajuov6oi avrjft. I should 
prefer to take a higher point of view, and apply the term 
philistine to people who are always seriously occupied with 
realities which are no realities ; but as such a definition 
would be a transcendental one, and therefore not generally 
intelligible, it would hardly be in place in the present 
treatise, which aims at being popular. The other defini- 
tion can be more easily elucidated, indicating, as it does, 
satisfactorily enough, the essential nature of all those 
qualities which disti;iguish the philistine. He is defined 
to be " a man without mental needs." From this it follows, 
firstly, in relation to himself, that he has no intellectual 
pleasures ; for, as was remarked before, there are no real 
pleasures without real needs. The philistine's life is 
animated by no desire to gain knowledge and insight for 
their own sake, or to experience that true aesthetic pleasure 
which is so nearly akin to them. If pleasures of this kind 
are fashionable, and the philistine finds himself compelled 
to pay attention to them, he will force himself to do so, 
but he will take as little interest in them as possible. 
His only real pleasures are of a sensual kind, and he thinks 
that these indemnify him for the loss of the others. 
To him oysters and champagne are the height of exist- 
ence ; the aim of his life is to procure what will contribute 
to his bodily welfare, and he is indeed in a happy way ii 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11. + Ecclesiastes, i. 18. 



32 THE WISDOM OF LTFE. 

this causes him some trouble. If the luxuries of life are 
heaped upon him, he will inevitably be bored, and against 
boredom he has a great many fancied remedies, balls, 
theaters, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, 
traveling and so on ; all of which cannot protect a man 
'from being bored, for where there are no intellectual 
needs, no intellectual pleasures are possible. The peculiar 
characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity, 
akin to that of animals. Nothing really pleases, qrexcites, 
or interests him, for sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted, 
and the society of philistines soon becomes burdensome, 
and one may even get tired of playing cards. True, the 
pleasures of vanity are left, pleasures which he enjoys in 
his own way, either by feeling himself superior in point of 
wealth, or rank, or influence and power to other people, 
who thereupon pay him honor ; or at any rate, by going 
about with those who have a superfluity of these blessings, 
sunning himself in the reflection of their splendor — what 
the English call a snob. 

From the essential nature of the philistine it follows, 
secondly, in regard to others, that, as he possesses no in- 
tellectual, but only physical needs, he will seek the society 
of those who can satisfy the latter, but not the 
former. The last thing he will expect from his friends is 
the possession of any sort of intellectual capacity : nay, if 
he chances to meet with it, it will rouse his antipathy and 
even hatred ; simply because in addition to an unpleasant 
sense of inferiority, he experiences, in his heart, a dull 
kind of envy, which has to be carefully concealed even 
from himself. Nevertheless, it sometimes grows into a 
secret feeling of rancor. But for all that, it will never 
occur to him to make his own ideas of worth or value con- 
form to the standard of such qualities ; he will continue 
to give the preference to rank and riches, power and in- 
fluence, which in his eyes seem to be the only genuine ad= 
vantage, in the world ; and his wish will be to excel 
in them himself. All this is the consequence of his 
being a man without intellectual needs. The great 
affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in 
ideas, and that, to escape being bored, they are in constant 
need of realities. Now realities are either unsatisfactory 
or dangerous ; when they lose their interest, they become 
fatiguing. But the ideal world ii illimitable and calm, 



PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. # 33 

" Something afar 
From the sphere of our sorrow*" 

Note. — In these remarks on the personal qualities which 
go to make happiness, I have been mainly concerned with 
the physical and intellectual nature of man. For an 
account of the direct and immediate influence of morality 
upon happiness, let me refer to my prize essay on " The 
Foundation of Morals " (Sec. 22). 



CHAPTEE III. 

PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 

Epicurus divides the needs of mankind into three classes, 
and the division made by this great professor of happiness 
is a true and a fine one. First come natural and necessary 
needs, such as, when not satisfied, produce pain — food and 
clothing, victus et am ictus, needs which can easily be satis- 
fied. Secondly, there are those needs which, though 
natural, are not necessary, such as the gratification of cer- 
tain of the senses. I may add, however, that in the re- 
port given by Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus does not mention 
which of the senses he means; so that on this point my ac- 
count of his doctrine is somewhat more definite and exact 
than the original. These are needs rather more difficult to 
satisfy. The third class consists of needs which are neither 
natural nor necessary, the need of luxury and prodigality, 
show and splendor, which never come to an end, and are 
very hard to satisfy.* 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limits which 
reason should impose on the desire for wealth; for there is 
no absolute or definite amount of wealth which will satisfy 
a man. The amount is always relative, that is to say, just 
so much as will maintain the proportion between what he 
wants and what he gets; for to measure a man's happiness 
only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to 
get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall 
have a numerator but no denominator. A man never feels 
the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for; 

* Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Bk. x., ch. xxvii., pp. 127 and 149; also 
Cicero de finibus, i. 13- 



34 ^ THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

he is just as happy without them; while another, who may 
have a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he 
has not got the one thing which he wants. In fact, here 
too, every man has an horizon of his own, and he will ex- 
pect just as much as he thinks it possible for him to get. 
If an object within his horizon looks as though he could con- 
fidently reckon on getting it, he is happy; but if difficulties 
come in the way, he is miserable. What lies beyond his 
horizon has no effect at all upon him. So it is that the 
vast possessions of the rich do not agitate the poor, and 
conversely, that a wealthy man is not consoled by all his 
wealth for the failure of his hopes. Kiches, one may say, 
are like sea- water; the more you drink, the thirstier you 
become: and the same is true of fame. The loss of wealth 
and prosperity leaves a man, as soon as the first pangs of 
grief are over, in very much the same habitual temper as 
before; and the reason of this is, that as soon as fate dimin- 
ishes the amount of his possessions, he himself immediately 
reduces the amount of his claims. But when misfortune 
comes upon us, to reduce the amount of our claims is just 
what is most painful; once that we have done so, the pain 
becomes less and less, and is felt no more; like an old 
wound which has healed. Conversely, when a piece of 
good fortune befalls us, our claims mount higher and higher 
as there is nothing to regulate them; it is in this feeling o£ 
expansion that the delight of it lies. But it lasts no longer 
than the process itself, and when the expansion is com- 
plete, the delight ceases; we have become accustomed to 
the increase in our claims, and consequently indifferent to 
the amount of wealth which satisfies them. There is a 
passage in the "Odyssey"* illustrating this truth, of 
which I may quote the last two lines: 

ToioS yap v6o<i e6ti knix^oviajv <xvQpG07tGav 
Oiov ecp r/jitap dyei itarr/p drdpcSr re Qegqv ts. 

— the thoughts of man that dwells on the earth are as the 
day granted him by the father of gods and men. Dis- 
content springs from a constant endeavor to increase the 
amount of our claims, when we are powerless to increase 
the amount which will satisfy them. 

When we consider how full of needs the human race is, 

*xviii. 130-7. 



PROPERTY, OR WEAT A MAN HAS. 35 

how its whole existence is based upon them, it is not a mat- 
ter for surprise that wealth is held in more sincere esteem, 
nay, in greater honor, than anything else in the world; nor 
ought we to wonder that gain is made the only goal of life 
and everything that does not lead to it pushed aside or 
thrown overboard — philosophy, for instance, by those who 
profess it. People are often reproached for wishing for 
money above all things, and for loving it more than any- 
thing else; but it is natural and even inevitable for people 
to love that which, like an unwearied Proteus, is always 
ready to turn itself into whatever object their wandering 
wishes or manifold desires may for the moment fix upon. 
Everything else can satisfy only one wish, one need; food is 
good only if you are hungry: wine, if you are able to enjoy 
it; drugs, if you are sick; fur for the winter; love for youth, 
and so on. These are all only relatively good dyaQd npos rz. 
Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a 
concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an 
abstract satisfaction of all. 

If a man has an independent fortune, he should regard 
it as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes 
which he may encounter ; he should not look upon it as 
giving him leave to get what pleasure he can out of the 
world, or as rendering it incumbent upon him to spend it in 
this way. People who are not born with a fortune, but 
end by making a large one through the exercise of whatever 
talents they possess, almost always come to think that their 
talents are their capital, and that the money they have 
gained is merely the interest upon it; they do not lay by 
a part of their earnings to form permanent capital, but 
spend their money much as they have earned it. Accord- 
ingly, they often fall into poverty ; their earnings decrease, 
or come to an end altogether, either because their talent 
is exhausted by becoming antiquated — as, for instance, 
very often happens in the case of fine art ; or else it was 
valid only under a special conjunction of circumstances 
which has now passed away. There is nothing to prevent 
those who live on the common labor of their hands from 
treating their earnings in that way if they like ; because 
their kind of skill is not likely to disappear, or, if it does, 
it can be replaced by that of their fellow-workmen ; 
morever, the kind of work they do is always in demand ; 
so that what the proverb says is quite true, " a useful trade 



36 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

is a mine 01 gold." But with artists and professionals of 
of every kind the case is quite different, and that is the 
reason why they are well paid. They ought to build up a 
capital out of their earnings ; but they recklessly look 
upon them as merely interest, and end in ruin. On the 
other hand, people who inherit money know, at least, how 
to distinguish between capital and interest, and most of 
them try to make their capital secure and not encroacK 
upon it ; nay if they can, they put by at least an eighth of 
their interest in order to meet future contingencies. So 
most of them maintain their position. These few remarks 
about capital and interest are not applicable to com- 
mercial life, for merchants look upon money only as a 
means of further gain, just as a workman regards his 
tools ; so even if their capital has been entirely the result 
of their own efforts, they try to preserve and increase it 
by using it. Accordingly, wealth is nowhere so much at 
home as in the merchant class. 

It will generally be found that those who know what it 
is" to have been in need and destitution are very much less 
afraid of it, and consequently more inclined to extrava- 
gance, than those who know poverty only by hearsay. 
People who have been born and bred in good circumstances, 
are as a rule, much more careful about the future, more 
economical, in fact, than those who by a piece of good 
luckj ^lave suddenly passed from poverty to wealth. 
This looks as if poverty were not really such a very 
wretched thing as it appears from a distance. The true 
reason, however, is rather the fact that the man who has 
been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it 
as something without which he could no more live than he 
could live without air ; he guards it as he does his very 
life ; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and 
economical. But the man who has been born into a poor 
position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any 
chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a super- 
fluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because if it 
comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with 
one anxiety the less; or, as Shakespeare says in Henry VI*., 

" . . . . the adage must be verified 
That beggars mounted run their horse to death." 

* Part III., Act 1, Sc. 4. 



PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 3? 

But it should be said that people of this kind have a firm 
and excessive trust, partly in fate, partly in the peculiar 
means which have already raised them out of need and 
poverty — a trust not only of the head, but of the heart 
also ; and so they do not, like the man born rich, look 
upon the shallows of poverty as bottomless, but console 
themselves with the thought that once they have touched 

f round again, they can take another upward flight. 
t is this trait in human character which explains the fact 
that women who were poor before their marriage often 
make greater claims, and are more extravagant, than those 
who have brought their husbands a rich dowry ; because 
as a rule, rich girls bring with them, not only a fortune, 
but also more eagerness, nay, more of the inherited in- 
stinct, to preserve it, than poor girls do. If any one 
doubts the truth of this, and thinks that it is just the 
opposite, he will find authority for his view in Ariosto's 
first satire ; but, on the other hand, Dr. Johnson agrees 
with my opinion. " A woman of fortune," he says, " being 
used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously ; 
but a woman who gets the command of money for the 
first time upon her marriage, has such a gusto in spending 
it, that she throws it away with great profusion." * And in 
any case let me advise any one who marries a poor girl not 
to leave her the capital but only the interest, and to take 
especial care that she has not the management of the 
children's fortune. 

I do not by any means think that I am touching upon a 
subject which is not worth my while to mention when I 
recommend people to be careful to preserve what they 
have earned or inherited. For to start life with just 
as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one 
to live comfortably without having to work — even if one 
has only just enough for one's self, not to speak of a family 
-—is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated ; for 
it means exemption and immunity from that chronic 
disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a 
plague ; it is emancipation from that forced labor which 
is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable 
fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, 
in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his 

* Bosw ell's " Life of Johnson " : ann : 17?«J, setat : 67. 



36 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

own time and powers, and able to say every morning, 
"This day is ni} own." And just for the same reason the 
difference between the man who has a hundred a year and 
the man who has a thousand, is infinitely smaller than the 
difference between the former and a man who has nothing 
at all. But inherited wealth reaches its utmost value 
when it falls to the individual endowed with mental powers 
of a high order, who is resolved to pursue a line of life 
not compatible with the making of money ; for he is then 
doubly endowed by fate and can live for his genius ; and 
he will pay his debt to mankind a hundred times, by 
achieving what no other could achieve, by producing some 
work which contributes to the general good, and redounds 
to the honor of humanity at large. Another, again, may 
use his wealth to further philanthropic schemes, and make 
himself well-deserving of his fellow-men. But a man who 
doesnoue of these things, who does not even try to do them, 
who never attempts to study thoroughly some one branch 
of knowledge so that he may at least do what he can 
toward promoting it — such a one, born as he is into riches, 
is a mere idler and thief of time, a contemptible fellow. 
He will not even be happy, because, in his ease, exemption 
from need delivers him up to the other extreme of human 
suffering, boredom, which is such martyrdom to him, 
that he would have been better off if poverty had given 
him something to do. And as he is bored he is apt to be 
extravagant, and so lose the advantage of which he showed 
himself unworthy. Countless numbers of people find 
themselves in want, simply because, when they had money, 
they spent it only to get momentary relief from the feel- 
ing of boredom which oppressed them. It is quite another 
matter if one's object is success in political life, where 
favor, friends and connections are all-important, in order 
to mount by their aid step by step on the ladder of 
promotion, and perhaps gain the topmost rung. In this 
"<ind of life, it is much better to be cast on the world 
without a penny : and if the aspirant is not of noble family, 
but is a man of some talent, it will redound to his advan- 
tage to be an absolute pauper. For w r hat every one most 
?iims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove 
tfiem inferior to himself ; and how much more is this the 
ess-?, m politics. Now, it is only an absolute pauper who 
h&« such a thorough conviction of his own complete, 



PROPERTY, OR WBAT A MAN MA8. 39 

profound and positive inferiority from every point of view, 
of bis own utter insignificance and worthlessness, that he 
can take his place quietly in the political machine.* 
He is the only one who can keep on bowing low enough, 
and even go right down upon his face if necessary ; he 
alone can submit to everything and laugh at it ; he alone 
knows the entire worthlessness of merit ; he alone uses his 
loudest voice and his boldest type whenever he has to 
speak or write of those who are placed over his head, or 
occupy any position of influence ; and if they do a little 
scribbling, he is ready to applaud it as a master-work. 
He alone undertands how to beg, and so betimes, when he 
is hardly out of his boyhood, he becomes a high priest of 
that hidden mystery which Goethe brings to light : 

** Ueber's Niedertrachtige 
Niemand sick beklage : 
Denn es ist das Machtige 
Was man dir auchsage :" 

—it is no use to complain of low aims ; for, whatever 
people may say, they rule the world. 

On the other hand, the man who is born with enough 
to live upon is generally of a somewhat independent tarn 
of mind; he is accustomed to keep his head up; he has not 
learned all the arts of the beggar; perhaps he even presumes 
a little upon the possession of talents which, as he ought to 
know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity; in the 
long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of those who 
are placed over his head, and when they try to put insults 
upon him, he becomes refractory and shy. This is not the 
way to get on in the world. Nay, such a man may at last 
incline to the opinion freely expressed by Voltaire: "We 
have only two days to live; it is not worth our while to spend 
them in cringing to contemptible rascals." But alas! let me 
observe by the way, that " contemptible rascal" is an attri- 
bute which may be predicated of an abominable number of 

* Translator's Note. — Schopenhauer is probably here making one 
of his many virulent attacks upon Hegel ; in this case on account of 
what he thought to be the philosopher's abject servility to the govern- 
ment of his day. Though the Hegelian sytem lias been the fruitful 
mother of many liberal ideas, there can be no doubt that Hegel's 
influence in his own lifetime, was an effective support of Prussian 
bureaucraev. 



40 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

people. What Juvenal says — it is difficult to rise if you* 
poverty is greater than your talent — 

" Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat 
Ees angusta dorni " — 

is more applicable to a career of art and literature than to 
political and social ambition. 

Wife and children I have not reckoned among a man's 
possessions; he is rather in their possession. It would be 
easier to include friends under that head; but a man's 
friends belong to him not a whit more than he belongs to 
them. 



CHAPTER IV. 



„9 C 



POSITION, OR A MANS PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF 
OTHERS. 

Section 1. — Reputation. 

By a peculiar weakness of human nature, people gene- 
rally think too much about the opinion which others form 
of them; although the slightest reflection will show that 
this opinion, whatever it may be, is not in itself essential 
to happiness. Therefore it is hard to understand why 
everybody feels so very pleased wLen he sees that other 
people have a good opinion of him, or say anything flatter- 
ing to his vanity. If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and as 
inevitably, if you praise a man, a tweet expression of de- 
light will appear on his face; and even though the praise is 
a palpable lie, it will be welcome, if the matter is one on 
which he prides himself. If only other people will applaud 
him, a man may console himself for downright misfortune, 
sr for the pittance he gets from the two sources of human 
happiness already discussed: and conversely, it is astonish- 
ing how infallibly a man will be annoyed, and in some 
cases deeply pained, by any wrong done to his feeling of 
self-importance, whatever be the nature, degree, or circum- 
stances of the injury, or by any depreciation, slight, or dis- 
regard. 

If the feeling of honor rests upon this peculiarity of 
human nature, it may have a very salutary effect upon the 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACS. 41 

welfare of a great many people, as a substitute for morality: 
but upon their happiness, more especially upon that peace 
of mind and independence which are so essential to hap- 
piness, its effect will be disturbing and prejudicial rather 
than salutary. Therefore it is advisable, from our point 
of view, to set limits to this weakness, and duly to con- 
sider and rightly to estimate the relative value of ad- 
vantages, and thus temper, as far as possible, this great 
susceptibility to other people's opinion, whether the opinion 
be one nattering to our vanity, or whether it causes us 
pain; for in either case it is the same feeling which is 
touched. Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other 
people are pleased to think — and how little it requires to 
disconcert or soothe the mind that is greedy of praise: 

" Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum 
Subruit ac reficit."* 

Therefore it will very much conduce to our happiness 
if we duly compare the value of what a man is in and for 
himself with what he is in the eyes of others. Under the 
former comes everything that fills up the span of our ex- 
istence and makes it what it is, in short, all the advantages 
already considered and summed up under the heads of 
personality and property; and the sphere in which all this 
takes place is the man's own consciousness. On the other 
hand, the sphere of what we are for other people is their 
consciousness, not ours; it is the kind of figure we make in 
their eyes, together with the thoughts which this arouses. f 
But this is something which has no direct and immediate 
existence for us, but can effect us only mediately and in- 
directly, so far, that is, as other people's behavior to- 
ward us is directed by it; and even then it ought to affect us 
only in so far as it can move us to modify what we are in 
and for ourselves. Apart from this, what goes on in other 
people's consciousness is, as such, a matter of indifference' 
to us; and in time we get really indifferent to it, when we 
come to see how superficial and futile are most people's 

* Horace, Epist: II, 1, 180. 

f Let me remark that people in the highest positions in life, with 
All their brilliance, pomp, display, magnificence and general show, 
may well say: Our happiness lies entirely outside us, for it exists 
only in the heads of others 



42 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their senti- 
ments, how perverse their opinions, and how much of error 
there is in most of them: when we learn by experience 
with what depreciation a man will speak of his fellow, when 
he is not obliged to fear him, or thinks that what he says 
will not come to his ears. And if ever we have had an op- 
portunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with 
nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shaU 
understand that to lay great value upon what other people 
say is to pay them too much honor. 

At all events, a man is in a very bad way, who finds no 
source of happiness in the first two classes of blessings al- 
ready treated of, but has to seek it in the third, in other 
words, not in what he is in himself, but in what he is in the 
opinion of others. For, after all, the foundation of our 
whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our 
physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is 
health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to 
maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care. 
Therecan benocompetiton or compensation between these 
essential factors or. the one side, and honor, pomp, rank and 
reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon 
the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice the latter for the 
former, if it were necessary. We should add very much to our 
happiness by a timely recognition of the simple wruth that 
every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin, and 
not in other people's opinions; and, consequently, that the 
actual conditions of our personal life — health tempera- 
ment, capacity, income, wife, children, friends, home, 
area hundred times more important for our happiness than 
what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise we 
Ehall be miserable. And if people insist that honor is 
dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that exist- 
ence and well-being are as nothing compared with other 
people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exag- 
gerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, 
ihat is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we 
are to make any progress in the world: but J shall come 
back to that presently. ^Vhen we see that almost every- 
thing men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort 
and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the pro- 
cess, has, in the end, no further object than to raise them- 
selves in the estimation of others; when we see that not 



POSITION, OR A MAX'S PLACE. £3 

only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even 
knowledge* and ait, are striven for only to obtain, as the 
ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellow 
men — is not thjs a lamentable proof of the extent to which 
human folly can go? To set much too high a value on other 
people's opinion is a common error everywhere; an error, it 
may be, rooted in human nature itself, or the result of 
civilization and social arrangements generally: but, what- 
ever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on 
all we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness. We 
can trace it from a timorous and slavish regard for what 
other people will say. up to the feeling which made Virgin- 
ins plunge the dagger into his daughter's heart, or induces 
many a man to sacrifice quiet, riches, health and even life 
itself, for posthumous glory. Undoubtedly this feeling is 
a very convenient instrument in the hands of those who 
have the control or direction of their fellow-men: and ac- 
cordingly we find that in every scheme for training up 
humanity in the way it should go, the maintenance and 
strengthening of the feeling of honor occupies an important 
place. But it is quite a different matter in its effect on 
human happiness, of which it is here our object to treat; 
and we should rather he careful to dissuade people from 
setting too much store by what others tbi tik of them. Daily 
experience shows us. however, that this is just the mistake 
people persist m making: most men set the utmost value 
precisely on what other people think, and are more con- 
cerned about it than about what goes on in their own con- 
sciousness, which is the thing most immediately and directly 
present to them. They reverse the natural order — regarding 
the opinions of others as real existence and their own 
consciousness as something shadowy: making the derivative 
and secondary into the principal, and considering the pic- 
ture they present to the world of more importance than 
their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct and im- 
mediate result out of what has no really direct or immediate 
existence, they fall into the kind of folly which is called 
vanity — the appropriate term for that which lias no solid 
or intrinsic value. Like a miser, such people forget the 
end in their eagerness to obtain the means. 

*&:ire tutim nihil est nisi te -scire hoc sciai alter (Persius i 27) 
— knowledge is no use unless others know that vou have it. 



44 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

The truth is that the value we set upon the opinion oi 
others, and our constant endeavor in respect of it, are eacli 
quite out of proportion to any result we may reasonably 
hope to attain; so that this attention to other people's atti- 
tude may be regarded as a kind of universal mania which 
every one inherits. Ln all we do. almost the first thing we 
think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the 
troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on 
this score; it is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that 
feeling of self-importance, which is so often mortified be- 
cause it is so very morbidly sensitive. It is solicitude about 
what others will say that underlies all our vanity and pre- 
tension, yes, and all our show and swagger too. Without 
it, there would not be a tenth part of the luxury which ex- 
ists. Pride in every form, point oVlionneur and punctilio. 
however varied their kind or sphere, are at bottom nothing 
but this — anxiety about what others will say — and what 
sacrifices it often costs! One can see it even in a child; and 
though it exists at every period of life, it is strongest r 
age; because, when the capacity for sensual pleasure fail / 
vanity and pride have only avarice to share their dominion. 
Frenchmen, perhaps, afford the best example of this feel- 
ing, and among them it is a regular epidemic, appearing 
sometimes in the most absurd ambition, or in a ridiculous 
kind of national vanity and the most shameless boasting. 
However, they frustrate their own aims, for other people 
make fun of them and call them la grande nation. 

By way of specially illustrating this perverse and 
exuberant respect for other people's opinion, let me take a 
passage from the Times of March 31st, 1846, giving a 
detailed account of the execution of one Thomas Wix, an 
apprentice who, from motives of vengeance, had murdered 
his master. Here we have very unusual circumstances 
and an extraordinary character, though one very suitable 
for our purpose; and these combine to give a striking 
picture of this folly, which is so deeply rooted in human 
nature, and allow us to form an accurate notion of the 
extent to which it will go. On the morning of the 
execution, says the report, "the rev. ordinary was early in 
attendance upon him, but Wix, beyond a quiet demeanor, 
betrayed no interest in his ministrations, appearing to 
feel anxious only to acquit himself ' bravely ' before the 
spectators of his ignominious end In the pro- 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 45 

cession Wix fell into his proper place with alacrity, and, 
as he entered the Chapel-yard, remarked, sufficiently loud 
to be heard by several persons near him, ' Now, then, as Dr. 
Dodd said, I shall soon know the grand secret/ On 
reaching the scaffold, the miserable wretch mounted the 
drop without the slightest assistance, and, when he got to 
the center, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding 
which called forth a tremendous cheer from the degraded 
crowd beneath." 

This is an admirable example of the way in which a 
man, with death in the most dreadful form before his very 
eyes, and eternity beyond it, will care for nothing but the 
impression he makes upon a crowd of gapers, and the 
opinion he leaves behind him in their heads. There was 
much the same kind of thing in the case of Lecomte, who 
was executed at Frankfurt, also in 1846, for an attempt on 
the king's life. At the trial he was very much annoyed 
that he was not allowed to appear, in decent attire, before 
the Upper House ; and on the day of the execution it was 
a special grief to him that he was not permitted to shave. 
It is not only in recent times that this kind of thing has 
been known to happen. Mateo Aleman tells us, in the 
Introduction to his celebrated romance, "Guzman de 
Alfarache," that many infatuated criminals, instead of 
devoting their last hours to the welfare of their souls, as 
they ought to have done, neglect this duty for the purpose 
of preparing and committing to memory a speech to be 
made from the scaffold. 

I take these extreme cases as being the best illustrations 
of what I mean : for they give us a magnified reflection of 
our own nature. The anxieties of all of us, our worries, 
vexations, bothers, troubles, uneasy apprehensions and 
strenuous efforts are due, in perhaps the large majority of 
instances, to what other people will say ; and we are just 
as foolish in this respect as those miserable criminals. 
Envy and hatred are very often traceable to a similar 
source. 

Now, it is obvious that happiness, which consists for the 
most part in peace of mind and contentment, would be 
served by nothing so much as by reducing this impulse of 
human nature within reasonable limits — which would 
perhaps make it one-fiftieth part of what it is now. By 
doing so, we should get rid of a thorn in the flesh which is 



46 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

always causing us pain. But it is a very difficult task, be- 
cause the impulse in question is a natural and innate perver- 
sity of human nature. Tacitus, says, "The lust of fame is the 
last that a wise man shakes off." * The only way of putting an 
end to this universal folly is to see clearly that it is a folly; 
and this may be done by recognizing the fact that most of 
the opinions in men's heads are apt to be false, perverse, er- 
roneous and absurd, and so in themselves unworthy of any 
attention; further, that other people's opinions can have 
very little real and positive influence upon us in most of the 
circumstances and affairs of life. Again, this opinion is 
generally of such an unfavorable character that it would 
worry a man to death to hear everything that was said of 
him, or the tone in which he was spoken of. And finally, 
among other things, we should be clear about the fact that 
honor itself has no really direct, but only an indirect, 
value. If people were generally converted from this uni- 
versal folly, the result would be such an addition to our 
peace of mind and cheerfulness as at present seems in- 
conceivable; people would present a firmer and more confi- 
dent front to the world, and generally behave with less 
embarrassment and restraint. It is observable that a retired 
mode of life has an exceedingly beneficial influence on our 
peace of mind, and this is mainly because we thus escape 
having to live constantly in the sight of others, and pay 
everlasting regard to their casual opinions; in a word, we 
are able to return upon ourselves. At the same time a 
good deal of positive misfortune might be avoided, which 
we are now drawn into by striving after shadows, or, to 
speak more correctly, by indulging a mischievous piece of 
folly; and we should consequently have more attention to 
give to solid realities and enjoy them with less inter- 
ruption than at present. But x^XsTtd rd uaXd — what is 
worth doing is hard to do. 

Section 2. — Pride. 

The folly of our nature which we are discussing puts 
forth three shoots, ambition, vanity and pride. The differ- 
ence between the last two is this: pride is an established 
conviction of one's own paramount worth in some par- 
ticular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a 

*Hist.. iv..6. 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 47 

conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the 
secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction 
one's self. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreci- 
ation of one's self. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this 
appreciation indirectly, from without. So we find that 
vain people are talkative, and proud, taciturn. But the 
vain person ought to be aware that the good opinion of 
others, which he strives for, may be obtained much more 
easily and certainly by persistent silence than by speech, 
even though he has very good things to say. Any one who 
wishes to affect pride is not therefore a proud man; but he 
will soon have to drop this, as every other assumed char- 
acter. 

It is only a firm, nnsliakable conviction of pre-eminent 
worth and special value which makes a man proud in the 
true sense of the word — a conviction which may, no doubt, 
be a mistaken one or rest on advantages which are of an 
adventitious and conventional character : still pride is not 
the less pride for all that, so long as it be present in real 
earnest. And since pride is thus rooted in conviction, it 
resembles every other form of knowledge in not being 
within our own arbitrament. Pride's worst foe — I mean 
its greatest obstacle — is vanity, which courts the applause 
of the world in order to gain the necessary foundation for 
a high opinion of one's own worth, while pride is based 
upon a pre-existing conviction of it. 

It is quite true that pride is something which is gener- 
ally found fault with, and cried down ; but usually, 1 
imagine, by those who have nothing upon which they can 
pride themselves. In view of the impudence and fool- 
hardiness of most people, any one who possesses any kind 
of superiority or merit will do well to keep his eyes fixed 
on it, if he does not want it to be entirely forgotten ; for 
if a man is good-natured enough to ignore his own 
privileges, and hob-nob with the generality of other people, 
as if he were quite on their level, they will be sure to treat 
him, frankly and candidly, as one of themselves. This 
is a piece of advice 1 would specially offer to those whose 
superiority is of the highest kind — real superiority, I mean, 
of a purely personal nature — which cannot, like orders and 
titles, appeal to the eye or ear at every moment ; as other- 
wise, they will find that familiarity breeds contempt or, as 
the Romans used to say, sus Miner vimi. " Joke with a 



48 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

slave, and he'll soon show his heels," is an excellent Arabian 
proverb ; nor ought we to despise what Horace says, 

" Sume superbiam 
Quaesitarn meritis " — 

usurp the fame you have deserved. No doubt, when 
modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous 
thing for the fools ; for everybody is expected to speak of 
himself as if he were one. This is leveling down indeed ! 
for it comes to look as if there were nothing but fools in 
the world. 

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride ; for if a 
man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no 
qualities of his own of which he can be proud ; otherwise, 
he would not have recourse to those which he shares with 
so many millions of his fellow-men. The man who is 
endowed with important personal qualities will be only too 
ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls 
short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. 
But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he 
can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation 
to which he belongs ; he is ready and glad to defend all 
its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus re-imbursing 
himself for his own inferiority. For example, if you 
speak of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English 
nation with the contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one 
Englishman in fifty to agree with you ; but if there should 
be one, he will generally happen to be an intelligent man. 

The Germans have no national pride, which shows how 
lonest they are, as everybody knows and how dishonest are 
;hose who, by a piece of ridiculous affectation, pretend that 
:hey are proud of their country — the Deutsche Brilder and 
the demagogues who flatter the mob in order to mislead it. 
I have heard it said that gunpowder was invented by a 
German. I doubt it. Lichtenberg asks, "Why is it that a 
man who is not a German does not care about pretending 
that he is one; and that if he makes any pretense at all, it 
is to be a Frenchman or an Englishman?"* 

* Translator's Note. — It should be remembered that these remarks 
were written in the earlier part of the present century, and that a 
German philosopher nowadays, even though he were as apt to say 
bitter things as Schopenhauer, could hardly write in a siruliaj 
strain 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 49 

However that may be, individuality is a far more im- 
portant thing than nationality, and in any given man de- 
serves a thousand-fold more consideration. And since you 
cannot speak of national character without referring to large 
masses of people, it is impossible to be loud in your praisea 
and nt the same time honest. National character is onlv 
another name for the particular form which the littleness, 
perversity and baseness of maukind take in every country. 
If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until 
we get disgusted with this too. Every nation mocks at 
other nations, and all are right. 

The contents of this chapter, which treats, as I have 
said, of what we represent in the world, or what we are in 
the eyes of others, may be further distributed under thre& 
heads; honor, rank and fame. 

Section 3. — Rank, 

Let us take rank first, as it may be dismissed in a few 
words, although it plays an important part in the eyes of 
the masses and of the philistines, and is a most useful 
wheel in the machinery of the state. 

It has a purely conventional value. Strictly speaking, it 
is a sham; its method is to exact an artificial respect, and, 
as a matter of fact, the whole thing is a mere farce. 

Orders, it may be said, are bills of exchange drawn on 
public opinion, and the measure of their value is the credit 
of the drawer. Of course, as a substitute for pensions, they 
save the state a good deal of money; and besides, they serve 
a very useful purpose, if they are distributed with discrimi- 
nation and judgment. For people in general have eyes 
and ears, it is true: but not much else, very little judgment 
indeed, or even memory. There are many services to the 
state quite beyond the range of their understanding: others 
again, are appreciated and made much of for a time, and 
then soon forgotten. It seems to me, therefore, very 
proper, that a cross or a star should proclaim to the mass 
of people always and everywhere, "This man is not like you; 
he has done something." But orders lose their value when 
they are distributed unjustly, or without due selection, or 
in too great numbers: a prince should be as careful in con- 
ferring them as a man of business is in signing a bill. It 
is a pleonasm to inscribe on any order for distinguished 



50 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

service; for every order ought to be for distinguished serv- 
ice. That stands to reason. 

Section 4. — Honor. 

Honor is a much larger question than rank, and more 
difficult to discuss. Let us begin by trying to define it. 

If I were to say lienor is external conscience, and conscience 
is inward honor, no doubta good many people would assent; 
but there would be more show than reality about such ;i 
definition, and it would hardly go to the root of the matter. 
I prefer to say, honor is, on its objective side, other people's 
opinion of what we are worth: on its subjective side, it is 
the respect we pay to this opinion. From the latter point 
of view, to be a man of honor is to exercise what is 
often a very wholesome, but by no means a purely moral., 
influence. 

The feelings of honor and shame exist in every man who 
is not utterly depraved, and honor is everywhere recognized 
as something particularly valuable. The reason of this is 
as follows. By and in himself a man can accomplish very 
little; he is like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. It is 
only in society that a man's powers can be called into full 
activity. He very soon finds this out when his conscious- 
ness begins to develop, and there arises in him the desire to 
be looked upon as a useful member of society, as one, that 
is, who is capable of playing his part as a man — pro parte 
virili — thereby acquiring a right to the benefits of social 
life. Xow, to be a useful member of society, one must do 
two things; firstly, what every one is expected to do every- 
where, and, secondly, what one's own particular position 
in the world demands and requires. 

But a man soon discovers that everything depends upon 
his being useful, not in his own opinion, but in the opinion 
of others; and so he tries his best to make that favorable 
impression upon the world, to which he attaches such a 
high value. Hence, this primitive and innate characteristic 
of human nature, which is called the feeling of honor, or, 
under another aspect, the feeling of shame — verecundia. 
It is this which brings a blush to his cheek at the thought 
of having suddenly to fall in the estimation of others, even 
when he knows that he is innocent, nay, even if his 
remissness extends to no absolute obligation, but only t<? 
one which he has taken upon himself of his own free will. 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLAGE. 51 

Conversely, nothing in life gives a man so much courage as 
the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other 
people regard him with favor; because it means that every 
one joins to give him help and protection, which is an 
infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than any- 
thing he can do himself. 

The variety of relations in which a man can stand to 
other people so as to obtain their confidence, that is their 
good opinion, gives rise to a distinction between several 
kinds of honor, resting chiefly on the different bearings 
that meum may take to tuum ; or, again, on the perform- 
ance of various pledges ; or finally, on the relation of the 
sexes. Hence, there are three main kinds of honor, each 
of which takes various forms — civic honor, official honor, 
and sexual honor. 

Civic honor has the widest sphere of all. It consists 
in the assumption that we shall pay unconditional respect to 
the rights of others, and, therefore, never use any unjust 
or unlawful means of getting what we want. It is the 
condition of all peaceable intercourse between man and 
man ; and it is destroyed by anything that openly and 
manifestly militates against this peaceable intercourse, 
anything, accordingly, which entails punishment at the 
hands of the law, always supposing that the punishment 
is a just one. 

The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that 
moral character is unalterable : a single bad action implies 
that future actions of the same kind will, under similar 
circumstances, also be bad. This is well expressed by the 
English use of the word character as meaning credit, 
reputation, honor. Hence honor, once lost, can never be 
recovered ; unless the loss rested on some mistake, such 
as may occur if a man is slandered or his actions viewed 
in a false light. So the law provides remedies against 
slander, libel, and even insult : for insult, though it 
amount to no more than mere abuse, is a kind of summary 
slander with a suppression of the reasons. What I mean 
may be well put in the Greek phrase — not quoted from 
any author — s6nv rj Xoidopia diaftoXrj 6vvrojudS. It is true 
that if a man abuses another, lie is simply showing that 
he has no real or true causes of complaint against him ; 
as, otherwise, he would bring these forward as the premises, 
and rely upon his hearers to draw the conclusion them- 



52 THE WLWOM OF LIFE. 

selves : instead of which, he gives the conclusion and leaves 
out the premises, trusting that people will suppose that he 
has done so only for the sake of being brief. 

Civic honor draws its existence and name from the 
middle classes ; but it applies equally to all, not excepting 
the highest. Xo man can disregard it, and it is a very 
serious thing, of which every one should be careful not to 
make light. The man who breaks confidence has forever 
forfeited confidence, whatever he may do, and whoever he 
may be ; and the bitter consequences of the loss of con- 
fidence can never be averted. 

There is a sense in which honor may be said to have a 
negative character in opposition to the positive character 
of fame. For honor is not the opinion people have of 
particular qualities which a man may happen to possess 
exclusively : it is rather the opinion they have of the 
qualities which a man may be expected to exhibit, and to 
which he should not prove false. Honor, therefore, means 
that a man is not exceptional ; fame, that he 
is. Fame is something which must be won ; honor only 
something which must not be lost. The absence of fame 
is obscurity, which is only a negative ; but loss of honor is 
shame, which is a positive quality. This negative char- 
acter of honor must not be confused with anything passive ; 
for honor is abov^ all things active in its working. It is 
the only quality which proceeds directly from the man who 
exhibits it : it is concerned entirely with what he does and 
leaves undone, and has nothing to do with the actions of 
others or the obstacles they place in his way. It is some- 
thing entirely in our own power — tcSv aqfr/noov. This distinc- 
tion, as we shall see presently, marks off true honor from 
the sham honor of chivalry. 

Slander is the only weapon by which honor can be at- 
tacked from without: and the only way to repel the attack 
is to confute the slander with the proper amount of pub 
licity, and a due unmasking of him who utters it. 

The reason why respect is paid to age is that old people 
have necessarily shown in the course of their lives whether 
or not they have been able to maintain their honor un- 
blemished; while that of young people has not yet been put 
to the proof, though they are credited with the possession 
of it. For neither length of years — equaled, as it is, and 
even excelled, in the case of some of the lower animals — 



POSITION, OF, A MAY'.- PLACE. 53 

nor. again, experience,, which is only a closer knowledge of 
the world's ways, can be any sufficient reason for the re- 
spect which the young are everywhere required to show to- 
ward the old; for if it were merely a matter of years, the 
weakness which attends on age would call rather for con- 
sideration than for respect. It is, however,, a remarkable 
Lhat white hair always commands reverence — a rever- 
ence really innate and instinctive. Wrinkles — a much 
6urer sign of old age — command no reverence at all: you 
never hear any one speak of "venerable wrinkles;" but 
"venerable white hair" is a common expression. 

Honor has only an indirect value. For, as I explained 
at the beginning of this chapter, what other people think 
of us, if it affe affect us only in so far as it 

governs their behavior toward us, and only just so long a3 
we live with, or have to do with. them. But it is to 
society alone that we owe that safety which we and our 
possessions enjoy in a state of civilization: in all we do we 
need the help of others, and they, in their turn, must have 
confidence in us before they can have anything to do with 
us. Accordingly, their opinion of us is, indirectly, a mat- 
ter of great importance: though I cannot see how it can 
have a direct or immediate value. This is an opinion also 
held by Cicero. 'T quite agree." he writes, "with what 
sippna and Diogenes used to say, that a good reputation 
is not worth raisins: a ringer to obtain, if it were not that 
it is so useful."* This truth has been insisted upon at great 
length by Helve tius in his chief work De FEsprit,f the 
conclusion of which is that we love esteem not for its own 
sake, but solely for the advantages which it brings. And 
as the means can never be more than the end, that saying. 
of which so much is made, ••'honor is dearer than life itself'' 
is. as I have remarkc -:■ exaggerated statement. So 

much, then, for civic honor. 

Oitlcial honor is the general opinion of other people that 
a man who rills any office really has the necessary qualities 
for the proper discharge of all the duties which appe 
to it. The e 7 3 more important the duties a man 

has to discharge in the state, and the highei and more 
influential the office which he fills, the stronger must be 
the opinion which people have of the moral and intellect- 

* "De finibus " iii., 17. f- •* Dise;" iii, 13. 



54 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

ual qualities which render him fit for his post. There- 
fore, the higher his position, the greater must be the 
degree of honor paid to him, expressed, as it is, in titles, 
orders and the generally subservient behavior of others 
toward him. As a rule, a man's official rank implies the 
particular degree of honor which ought to be paid to him, 
however much this degree may be modified by the capacity 
of the masses to form any motion of its importance. 
Still, as a matter of fact, greater honor is paid to a man 
who fulfills special duties than to the common citizen, 
whose honor mainly consists in keeping clear of dishonor. 

Official honor demands, further, that the man who 
occupies an office must maintain respect for it, for the 
sake both of his colleagues and of those who will come 
after him. This respect an official can maintain by a 
proper observance of his duties, and by repelling any 
attack that may be made upon the office itself or upon 
its occupant : he must not, for instance, pass over un- 
heeded any statement to the effect that the duties of the 
office are not properly discharged, or that the office itself 
does not conduce to the public welfare. He must prove 
the unwarrantable nature of such attacks by enforcing the 
legal penalty for them. 

Subordinate to the honor of official personages comes 
that of those who serve the state in any other capacity, as 
doctors, lawyers, teachers, any one, in short, who by gradu- 
ating in any subject, or by any other public declaration 
that he is qualified to exercise some special skill, slaims to 
practice it ; in a word, the honor of all those who take any 
public pledges whatever. Under this head comes military 
honor, in the true sense of the word, the opinion that 
people who have bound themselves to defend their country 
really possess the requisite qualities which will enable them 
to do so, especially courage, personal bravery and strength, 
and that they are perfectly ready to defend their country 
to the death, and never and under no circumstances desert 
the flag to which they have once sworn allegiance. I have 
here taken official honor in a wider sense than that in which 
it is generally used, namely, the respect due by citizens to 
an office itself. 

In treating of sexual honor and the principles on which 
it rests, a little more attention and analysis are necessary; 
and what I shall sav will sunnort mv contention that al? 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 55 

honor really rests upon a utilitarian basis. There are two 
natural divisions of the subject — the honor of women and 
the honor of men, in either side issuing in a well-under- 
stood esprit de corps. The former is by far the more im- 
portant of the two, because the most essential feature in 
woman's life is her relation to man. 

Female honor is the general opinion in regard to a girl 
that she is pure, and in regard to a wife that she is faith- 
ful. The importance of this opinion rests upon the follow- 
ing considerations. Women depend upon men in all 
the relations of life ; men upon women it might be 
said, in one only. So an arrangement is made for mutual 
interdependence — man undertaking responsibility for all 
woman's needs and also for the children that spring from 
their union — an arrangement on which is based the welfare 
of the whole female race. To carry out this plan, women 
have to band together with a show of esprit de corps, and 
present one undivided front to their common enemy, man 
— who possesses all the good things of the earth, in virtue 
of his superior physical and intellectual power — in order 
to lay siege to and conquer him, and so get possession of 
him and a share of those good things. To this end the 
honor of all women depends upon the enforcement of the 
rule that no woman should give herself to a man except in 
marriage, in order that every man may be forced, as it 
were, to surrender and ally himself with a woman ; by this 
arrangement provision is made for the whole of the female 
race. This is a result, however which can be obtained only 
by a strict observance of the rule ; and, accordingly, women 
everywhere show true esprit de corps, in carefully insisting 
upon its maintenance. Any girl who commits a breach of 
the rule betrays the whole female race, because its welfare 
would be destroyed if every woman were to do likewise ; so 
*he is cast out with shame as one who has lost her honor. 
No woman will have anything more to do with her ; she 
is avoided like the plague. The same doom is awarded to 
a woman who breaks the marriage tie ; for in so doing she 
is false to the terms upon which the man capitulated : 
and as her conduct is such as to frighten other men from 
making a similar surrender, it imperils the welfare of all 
her sisters. Nay more ; this deception and coarse breach 
of troth is a crime punishable by the loss, not only of per- 
sonal, but also of civic honor. This is why we minimize 



56 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

the shame of a girl, but not of a wife ; because, in the 
former case, marriage can restore honor, while in the latter, 
no atonement can be made for the breach of contract. 

Once this esprit de corps is acknowledged to be the foun- 
dation of female honor, and is seen to be a wholesome, nay, 
a necessary arrangement, as at bottom a matter of prudence 
and interest, its extreme importance for the welfare of 
women will be recognized. But it does not possess anything 
more than a relative value. It is no absolute end, lying be- 
yond all other aim of existence and valued above life itself. 
In this view, there will be nothing to applaud in the forced 
and extravagant conduct of aLucretia or a Virginius — con- 
duct which can easily degenerate into tragic farce, and 
produce a terrible feeling of revulsion. The conclusion of 
Emilia Galotti, for instance, makes one leave the theater 
completely ill at ease; and, on the other hand, all the rules 
of female honor cannot prevent a certain sympathy with 
Clara in Egmont. To carry this principle of female honor 
too iar is to forget the end in thinking of the means — and 
this is just what people often do; for such exaggeration 
suggests that the value of sexual honor is absolute; while 
the truth is that it is more relative than any Ither kind. 
One might go so far as to say that its value is purely con- 
ventional, when one sees from Thomasius how in all ages 
and countries, up to the time of the Eeformation, irregu- 
larities were permitted and recognized by law, with no 
derogation to female honor — not to speak of the temple of 
Mylitta at Babylon.* 

There are also of course, certain circumstances in civil life 
which make external forms of marriage impossible, especially 
in Catholic countries, where there is no such thing as divorce^ 
Ruling princes everywhere, would, inrny opinion, do much 
better, from a moral point of view, to dispense with forms 
altogether rather than contract a morganatic marriage, the 
descendants of which might raise claims to the throne if the 
legitimate stock happened to die out: so that there is a pos- 
sibility, though perhaps, a remote one, that a morganatic 
marriage might produce a civil war. And, besides, such a 
marriage, concluded in defiance of all outward ceremony, is 
a concession made to women and priests — two classes of 
persons to whom one should be most careful to give as little 

* Herodotus, i. 199. 



POSITION. OR A MAN'S PLACE. 57 

tether as possible. It is further to be remarked that every 
man in a country can marry the woman of his choice, ex- 
cept one poor individual, namely the prince. His hand 
belongs to his country, and can be given in marriage only 
for reasons of state, that is, for the good of the country. 
Still, for all that, he is a man; and, as a man, he likes to 
follow whither his heart leads. It is an unjust, ungrateful 
and priggish thing to forbid, or to desire to forbid, a prince 
from following his inclinations in this matter; of course, a& 
long as the lady has no influence upon the government of 
the country. From her point of view she occupies an ex- 
ceptional position, and does not come under the ordinary 
rules of sexual honor: for she has merely given herself to a 
man who loves her, and whom she loves but cannot marry. 
And in general, the fact that the principle of female honor 
has no origin in nature, is shown by the many bloody sacri- 
fices which have been offered to it — the murder of chil- 
dren and the mother's suicide. No doubt a girl who con- 
travenes the code commits a breach of faith against her whole 
sex: but this faith is one which is only secretly taken for 
granted, and not sworn to. And since, in most cases, her 
own prospects suffer most immediately, her folly is infinitely 
greater than her crime. 

The corresponding virtue in men is a product of the one 
I have been discussing. It is their esprit de corps, which 
demands that, once a man has made that surrender of him- 
self in marriage which is so advantageous to his conqueror, 
he shall take care that the terms of the treaty are maintained 
both in order that the agreement itself may lose none of its 
force by the permission of any laxity in its observance, and 
that men, having given up everything, may, at least, be as- 
sured of their bargain, namely, exclusive possession. Ac- 
cordingly, it is part of a man's honor to resent a breach of 
the marriage tie on the part of his wife, and to punish it, 
at the very least by separating from her. If he condones the 
offense, his fellow-men cry shame upon him: but the shame 
in this case is not nearly so foul as that of the woman who 
has lost her honor: the stain is by no means of so deep a 
dye — levioris notae macula — because a man's relation to 
woman is subordinate to many other and more important 
affairs in his life. The two great dramatic poets of modern 
times have each taken man's honor as the theme of two 
plays; Shakespeare in "Othello" and "The Winter's Tale/' 



58 THE WISDOM OF LIFE, 

and Calderon in "El medico de su honra" (the "Physician 
of his Honor)/' and "Asecreto agravios ecreta vengeanza" 
( f 'for Secret Insult Secret Vengeance)." It should be said, 
however that honor demands the punishment of the wife 
only ; to punish her paramour too, is a work of snperogation. 
This confirms the view I have taken, that a man's honor 
originates in esprit de corps. 

The kind of honor which I have been discussing hitherto 
has always existed in its various forms and principles 
among all nations and at all times ; although the history 
of female honor shows that its principles have undergone 
certain local modifications at different periods. But there 
is another species of honor which differs from this entirely, 
a species of honor of which the Greeks and Romans had 
no conception, and up to this day it is perfectly unknown 
among Chinese, Hindoos or Mohammedans. It is a 
kind of honor which arose only in the Middle Age, and is 
indigenous only to Christian Europe, nay, only to an ex- 
tremely small portion of the population, that is to say, the 
higher classes of society and those who ape them. It is 
knightly honor, or point cVhonneur. Its principles are 
quite different from those which underlie the kind of honor 
I have been treating until now, and iu some respects are 
even opposed to them. The sort I am referring to produces 
the cavalier ; while the other kind creates the man of 
honor. As this is so, I shall proceed to give an explana> 
tion of its principles, as a kind of code or mirror ot 
knightly courtesy. 

(1.) To begin with, honor of this sort consists, not in 
other people's opinion of what we are worth, but wholly 
and entirely in whether they express it or not, no matter 
whether they really have any opinion at all, let alone 
whether they know of reasons for having one. Other 
people may entertain the worst opinion of us in con- 
sequence of what we do, and may despise us as much as they 
like; so long as no one dares to give expression to his 
opinion, our honor remains untarnished. So if our 
actions and qualities compel the highest respect from other 
people, and, they have no option but to give this respect 
— as soon as any one, no matter how wicked or foolish he 
may be, utters something depreciatory of us, our honor is 
offended, nay, gone forever, unless we can manage to 
restore it. A superfluous proof of what I say, namely, 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLAGE. §9 

that knightly honor depends, not upon what people think, 
but upon what they say, is furnished by the fact that in- 
sults can be withdrawn, or, if necessary, from thesubjectof 
an apology, which makes them as though they had never 
been uttered. Whether the opinion which underlay the 
expression has also been rectified, and why the expression 
should ever have been used, are questions which are 
perfectly unimportant : so long as the statement is with- 
drawn, all is well. The truth is that conduct of this kind 
aims, not at earning respect, but at extorting it. 

(2.) In the second place, this sort of honor rests, not on 
what a man does, but on what he suffers, the obstacles 
he encounters ; differing from the honor which prevails in 
all else, in consisting, not in what he says or does himself, 
but in what another man says or does. His honor is thus 
at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the tip 
of his tongue ; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone 
forever — unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest 
it back again by a process which 1 shall mention presently, 
a process which involves danger to his life, health, freedom, 
property and peace of mind. A man's whole conduct may 
be in accordance with the most righteous and noble prin- 
ciples, his spirit may be the purest that ever breathed, his 
intellect of the very highest order ; and yet his honor may 
•disappear the moment that any one is pleased to insult 
him, any one at all who has not offended against this code 
of honor himself, let him be the most worthless rascal or 
the most stupid beast, an idler, gambler, debtor, a man, in 
short, of no account at all. It is usually this sort of 
fellow who likes to insult people ; for, as Seneca* rightly 
remarks, " ut quisqne contemtissimas et ludibrio est it a 
solutissimm linguoe est" — the more contemptible and ridicu- 
lous a man is, the readier he is w T ith his tongue. His in- 
sults are most likely to be directed against the very kind 
of man I have described, because people of different tastes 
can never be friends, and the sight of pre-eminent merit 
is apt to raise the secret ire of a ne'er-do-well. AVhat 
Goethe says in the " West-ostlicher Divan," is quite true, 
that it is uselesss to complain against your enemies ; for 
they can never become your friends, if your whole being 
is a standing reproach to them : 

* " \>e ^onstantia." 11. 



60 TEE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

'* Was klagst du iiber Feinde ? 
Sollten Solche je werden Freunde 
Denen das Wesen, wie du bist, 
Im stillen ein ewiger Vorwurf ist?" 

It is obvious that people of this worthless description 
lave good cause to be thankful to the principle of honor, 
aecause it puts them on a level with people who in every 
other respect stand far above them. If a fellow likes to 
insult any one, attribute to him, for example, some bad 
quality, this is taken as prinia facie a, well-founded opinion 
true in fact; a decree, as it were, with all the force of law; 
nay, if it is not at once wiped out in blood, it is a judg- 
ment which holds good and valid to all time. In other 
words, the man who is insulted remains — in the eyes of all 
honorable people — what the man who uttered the insult — 
even though he were the greatest wretch on earth — was 
pleased to call him; for he has "put up with" the insult — the 
technical term, I believe. Accordingly, all honorable 
people will have nothing more to do with him, and treat 
him like a leper, and, it may be, refuse to go into any com- 
pany where he may be found, and so on. 

This wise proceeding may, I think, be traced back to the 
fact that in the Middle Age, up to the fifteenth century, it 
was not the accuser in any criminal process who had to 
prove the guilt of the accused, but the accused who had to 
prove his innocence.* This he could do by swearing he was 
not guilty; and his backers — consacramentales — had to come 
and swear that in their opinion he was incapable of perjury. 
If he could find no one to help him in this way, or the ac- 
cuser took objection to his backers, recourse was had to 
trial "by the judgment of God," which generally meant a 
duel. For the accused was now in disgrace,! and had to 
clear himself. Here then is the origin of the notion of 
disgrace, and of that whole system which prevails nowa- 
days among honorable people — only that the oath is omitted. 
This is also the explanation of that deep feeling of indigna- 
tion which honorable people are called upon to show if they 

* See C. G. von Wachter's "Beitrage zur deutschen Geschichte," 
especially the chapter on criminal law. 

f Translator's Note. — It is true that this expression has another and 
special meaning in the technical terminology of chivalry, but it is the 
nearest English equivalent wh^h I can find for the German — ein 
BexJioiUner, 



POSIT fON, OR A. MAN'S PLACE. 61 

are given the lie: it is a reproach which they say must be wiped 
out in blood. It seldom comes to this pass, however, though 
lies are of common occurrence: but in England, more than 
elsewhere, it is a superstition which lias taken very deep 
root. As a matter of order, a man who threatens to kill 
mother for telling a lie should never have told one himself. 
The fact is, that the criminal trial of the Middle Age also 
admitted of a shorter form. In reply to the charge, the 
accused answered: "That is a lie;" whereupon it was left to 
be decided by "the judgment of God." Hence, the code of 
knightly honor prescribes that, when the lie is given, an 
appeal to arms follows as a matter of course. So much, then 
for the theory of insult. 

But there is something even worse than insult, something 
so dreadful that I must beg pardon of all "honorable people" 
for so much as mentioning it in this code of knightly honor 
for I know they will shiver, and their hair will stand on 
end, at the very thought of it — the summum malum the 
greatest evil on earth, worse than death and damnation. A 
man may give another — horribile dictu! — a slap or a blow. 
This is such an awful thing, and so utterly fatal to all 
honor, that, while any other species of insult may be healed 
by blood-letting, this can be cured only by the coup-de- 
grdce. 

(3.) In the third place, this kind of hc^or has absolutely 
nothing to do with what a man may be in and for himself; 
or, again, with the question whether his moral character can 
ever become better or worse, and all such pedantic inquiries. 
If your honor happens to be attacked, or to all appearances 
gone, it can very soon be restored in its entirety if you are 
only quick enough in having recourse to the one universal 
remedy — a duel. But if the aggressor does not belong to 
the classes which recognize the code of knightly honor, or 
has himself once offended against it, there is a safer way of 
meeting any attack upon your honor, whether it consists 
in blows, or merely in words. If you are armed, you can 
strike down your opponent on the spot, or perhaps an hour 
later. This will restore your honor. 

But if you wish to avoid such an extreme step, from fear 
of any unpleasant consequences arising therefrom, or from 
uncertainty as to whether the aggressor is subject to the 
laws of knightly honor or not, there is another means of 
making your position good, namely, the Avantage. This 



62 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

consists in returning rudeness with still greater rudeness, 
and if insults are no use, yon can try a blow, which forms a 
sort of climax in the redemption of your honor; for instance 
a box on the ear may be cured by a blow with a stick, and 
a blow with a stick by a thrashing with a horsewhip; and 
as the approved remedy for this last, some people recom- 
mend you to spit at your opponent. * If all these means 
are of no avail, you must not shrink from drawing blood. 
And the reason for these methods of wiping out insult is, 
in this code, as follows: 

(4.) To receive an insult is disgraceful; to give one,honor- 
able. Let me take an example. My opponent has truth, 
right and reason on his side. Very well. I insult him. 
Thereupon right and honor leave him and come to me, and 
for the time being, he has lost them — until he gets them 
back, not by the exercise of right or reason, but by shoot- 
ing and sticking me. Accordingly, rudeness is a quality 
which, in point of honor, is a substitute for any other and 
outweighs them all. The rudest is always right. What 
more do you want? However stupid, bad or Avicked a man 
may have been, if lie is only rude into the bargain, he con- 
dones and legitimizes all his faults. If in any discussion 
or conversation, another man shows more knowledge, 
greater love of truth, a sounder judgment, better under- 
standing than we or generally exhibits intellectual qualities 
which cast ours into the shade, we can at once annul his 
superiority and our own shallowness, and in our turn be 
superior to him, by being insulting and offensive. For 
rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses in- 
tellect. If our opponent does not care for our mode of at- 
tack, and will not answer still more rudely, so as to plunge 
us into the ignoble rivalry of the Avantage, we are the 
victors and honor is on our side. Truth, knowledge, 
understanding, intellect, wit, must beat a retreat and leave 
the field to this almighty insolence. 

"Honorable people" immediately make a show of moun- 
ting their war-horse, if any one utters an opinion adverse to 
theirs, or shows more intelligence than they can muster; 
and if in any controversy they are at a loss for a reply, they 

* Translator's Note. — It must be remembered that Schopenhauer 
is here describing-, or perhaps caricaturing-, the manners and customs 
of the German aristocracy of half a century ago. Now, of sourso, 
nous avons change tout cela! 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 63 

look about for some weapon of rudeness, which will serve as 
well and come readier to hand; so they retire masters of the 
position. It must now be obvious that people are quite 
right in applauding this principle of honor as having 
ennobled the tone of society. This principle springs from 
another, which forms the heart and soul of the entire 
code. 

(5.) Fifthly, the code implies that the highest court to 
which a man can appeal in any differences he may have 
with another on a point of honor is the court of physical 
force, that is, of brutality. Every piece of rudeness is, 
strictly speaking, an appeal to brutality: for it is a declara- 
tion that intellectual strength and moral insight are in- 
competent to decide, and that the battle must be fought 
out by physical force — a struggle which, in the case of man, 
whom Franklin defines as a tool-making animal, is decided 
by the weapons peculiar to the species; and the decision is 
irrevocable. This is the well-known principle of the right 
of might — irony, of course, like the wit of a fool, a par- 
allel phrase. The honor of a knight may be called the glory 
of might. 

(6.) Lastly, if, as we saw above, civic honor is very 
scrupulous in the matter of meum and tuum, paying 
great respect to obligations and a promise once made, the 
code we are here discussing displays, on the other hand, 
the noblest liberality. There is only one word which may 
not be broken, the word of honor — "upon my honor/' as 
people say — the presumption being, of course, that every 
other form of promise may be broken. Nay, if the worst 
comes to the worst, it is easy to break even one's word of 
honor, and still remain honorable — again by adopting that 
universal remedy, the duel, and fighting with those who 
maintain that we pledged our word. Further, there is one 
debt, and one alone, that under no circumstances must be left 
unpaid — a gambling debt, which has accordingly been 
called a debt of honor. In all other kinds of debt you may 
cheat Jews and Christians as much as you like ; and your 
knightly honor remains without a stain. 

The unprejudiced reader will see at once that such a 
strange, savage and ridiculous code of honor as this has no 
foundation in human nature, nor any warrant in a healthy 
view of human affairs. The extremely narrow sphere of 
its operation serves only to intensify the feeling, which is 



64 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

exclusively confined to. Europe since the Middle Age, and 
then only to the upper classes, officers and soldiers, and 
people who imitate them. Neither Greeks nor Romans 
knew anything of this code of honor or of its principles ; 
nor the highly civilized nations of Asia, ancient or modern. 
Among them no other kind of honor is recognized but 
that which I discussed first, in virtue of which a man is 
what lie shows himself to be by his actions, not what any 
wagging tongue is pleased to say of him. They thought 
that what a man said or did might perhaps affect his own 
honor, but not any other man's. To them, a blow was 
but a blow — and any horse or donkey could give a harder 
one — a blow which under certain circumstances might 
make a man angry and demand immediate vengeance; 
but it had nothing to do with honor. No one kept ac- 
count of blows or insulting words, or of the satisfaction 
which was demanded or omitted to be demanded. Yet in 
personal bravery and contempt of death, the ancients were 
certainly not inferior to the nations of Christian Europe. 
The Greeks and Romans were thorough heroes, if you like ; 
but they knew nothing about poi?it cVhonneur. If they 
had any idea of a duel, it was totally unconnected with the 
life of the nobles ; it was merely the exhibition of mer- 
cenary gladiators, slaves devoted to slaughter, condemned 
criminals, who, alternately with wild beasts, were set to 
butcher one another to make a Roman holiday. When 
Christianity was introduced, gladiatorial shows were done 
away with, and their place taken, in Christian times, by 
the "duel, which was a way of settling difficulties by "the 
judgment of God." If the gladiatorial fight was a cruel 
sacrifice to the prevailing desire for great spectacles, 
dueling is a cruel sacrifice to existing prejudices ; a sacrifice, 
not of criminals, slaves and prisoners, but of the noble and 
the free.* 

There are a great many traits in the character of tho 
ancients which show that they were entirely free from these 
prejudices. When for instance, Marius was summoned 
to a duel by a Teutonic chief, he returned answer to the 
effect that, if the chief were tired of his life, he might go 

* Translator's Note. These and other remarks on dueling will 
no doubt wear a belated look to English readers ; but they are 
hardly yet antiquated for most parts of the Continent, 



POSITION, On A MAN'S PLACE. 65 

and hang himself ; at the same time he offered him a 
veteran gladiator for a round or two. Plutarch relates in 
his life of Themistocles that Eurybiades, who was in com- 
mand of the fleet, once raised his stick to strike him ', 
whereupon Themistocles, instead of drawing his sword, 
simply said : " Strike, but hear me." How sorry the reader 
must be, if he is an honorable man, to find that we have 
no information that the Athenian officers refused in a body 
to serve any longer under Themistocles, if he acted like 
that ! There is a modern French writer who declares that 
if any one considers Demosthenes a man of honor, his 
ignorance will excite a smile of pity, and that Cicero was 
not a man of honor either!* In a certain passage in 
Plato's " Laws,"f the philosopher speaks at length of odxia 
or assault, showing us clearly enough that the ancients had 
no notion of any feeling of honor in connection with such 
matters. Socrates' frequent discussions were often fol- 
lowed by his being severely handled, and he bore it all 
mildly. Once, for instance, when somebody kicked him, the 
patience with which he took the insult surprised one of 
his friends. " Do you think," said Socrates, " that if an ass 
happened to kick me, I should resent it ?"J On another 
occasion, when he was asked, " Has not that lellow abused 
and insulted you ?" "No," washis answer, "what he says is 
not addressed to me."§ Stobasus has preserved a long passage 
from Musonius, from which we can see how the ancients 
treated insults. They knew no other form of satisfaction 
than that which the law provided, and wise people despised 
even this. If a Greek received a box on the ear, he could 
get satisfaction by the aid of the law : as is evident from 
Plato's "Gorgias," where Socrates' opinion may be found. 
The same thing may be seen in the account given by 
Gellius of one Lucius Veratius, who had the audacity to 
give some Roman citizens whom he met on the road a box 
on the ear, without any provocation whatever ; but to 
avoid any ulterior consequences, he told a slave to bring a 
bag of small money, and on the spot paid the trivial legal 
penalty to the men whom he had astonished by his 
conduct. 

* Soirees litteraires : par C. Durand. Rouen, 1828. f Bk. ix 
\ Diogene? Laertius, ii. 21. § Ibid. 36. 



66 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

Crates, the celebrated cynic philosopher, got such a 
box on the ear from Nieodromus, the musician, that his face 
swelled up and became black and blue; whereupon he put 
a label on his forehead, with the inscription, Nicodromus 
fecit, which brought much disgrace to the fluteplayer who 
had committed such a piece of brutality upon the man 
whom all Athens honored as a household god.* And in a 
letter to Melesippus, Diogenes of Sinope tells us that he 
got a beating from the drunken sons of the Athenians ; but 
he adds that it was a matter of no importance.! And 
Seneca devotes the last few chapters of his " De Constantia " 
to a lengthy discussion on insult — contumelia ; in order to 
show that a wise man will take no notice of it. In Chapter 
XIV. he says, " What shall a wise man do, if he is given a 
blow ? What Cato did, when someone struck him on the 
mouth ; not fire up or avenge the insult, or even return 
the blow, but simply ignore it." 

"Yes,"you say, "but these men were philosophers." — And 
you are fools, eh? Precisely. 

It is clear that the whole code of knightly honor was ut- 
terly unknown to the ancients; for the simple reason that 
they always took a natural and unprejudiced view of human 
affairs, and did not allow themselves to be influenced by any 
such vicious and abominable folly. A blow in the face was 
to them a blow and nothing more, a trivial physical injury; 
wheras the moderns make a catastrophe out of it, a theme 
for a tragedy: as, for instance, in the Cid of Corneille, or 
in a recent German comedy of middle class life, called "The 
Power of Circumstance," which should have been entitled 
"The Power of Prejudice." If a member of the national 
assembly at Paris got a blow on the ear, it would resound 
from one end of Europe to the other. The examples which 
I have given of the way in which such an occurrence would 
have been treated in classic times may not suit the ideas of 
"honorable people;'" so let me recommend to their notice, 
as a kind of antidote, the story of Monsieur Desglands in 
Diderot's masterpiece, "Jacques le fataliste." It is an excel- 
lent specimen of modern knightly honor, which, no doubt 
they will find enjoyable and edifying. J; 

* Diogenes Laertius, vi. 87, and Apul : Flor : p. 126. 

f Cf. Casaubon's Note, ad Diog. Laert., vi. 33. 

I Translator's Note. — The story to which Schopenhauer here refers 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 67 

From what I have said it must be quite evident that the 
principle of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous 
origin in human nature. It is an artificial product, and its 
source is not hard to find. Its existence obviously dates 
from the time when people used their fists more than their 
heads, when priestcraft had enchained the human intellect, 
the much bepraised Middle Age, with its system of chiv- 
alry. That was the time when people let the Almighty 
not only care for them but judge for them too: when dif- 
ficult cases were decided by an ordeal, a "judgment of God;" 
which, with few exceptions, meant a duel, not only where 
nobles were concerned, but in the case of ordinary citizens 
as well. There is a neat illustration of this in Shakespeare's 
"Henry VI,"* Every judicial sentence was subject to an ap- 
peal to arms — a court, as it were of higher instance, namely 
"the judgment of God;" and this really meant that physical 
strength and activity, that is, our animal nature, usurped 
the place of reason on the judgment seat, deciding in mat- 
ters of right and wrong, not by what a man had done, but 
by the force with which he was opposed, the same system, in 
fact as prevails to-day under the principles of knightly honor. 
If any one doubts that such is really the origin of our 
modern duel, let him read an excellent work by J. B. Mil- 
lingen, "The History of Dueling." f Nay, you may still 
find among the supporters of the system — who, by the way, 
are not usually the most educated or thoughtful of men — 
some who look upon the result of a duel as really consti- 
tuting a divine judgment in the matter in dispute: no doubt 
in consequence of the traditional feeling on the subject. 

is briefly as follows: Two gentlemen, one of whom was named Des- 
glands, were paying court to the same lady. As they sat at table side 
by side, with the lady opposite, Desglands did his best to charm her 
with his conversation; but she pretended not to hear him, and kept 
looking at his rival. In the agony of jealousy, Desglands, as he was 
holding a fresh egg in his hand, involuntarily crushed it; the shell 
broke, and its contents bespattered his rival's face. Seeing him raise 
bis hand, Desglands seized it and whispered: "Sir, I take it as given." 
The next day Desglands appeared with a large piece of black stick- 
ing-plaster upon his right cheek. In the duel which followed, Des- 
glands severely wounded his rival; upon which he reduced the size of 
the plaster. When his rival recovered, they had another duel; Des- 
glands drew blood again, and again made his plaster a little smaller; 
and so on for five or six times. After every duel Desglands' plaster 
grew less and less, until at last his rival was killed. 

*Part II., Act 2, Sc. §. \ Published in 184», 



6S THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

But leaving aside the question of origin, it must now be 
clear to us that the main tendency of the principle is to 
use physical menace for the purpose of extorting an appear- 
ance of respect which is deemed too difficult or superfluous 
to acquire in reality; a proceeding which comes to much 
the same thing as if you were to prove the warmth of your 
room by holding your hand on the thermometer and so 
make it rise. In fact, the kernel of the matter is this: 
whereas civic honor aims at peaceable intercourse, and con- 
sists in the opinion of other people that we deserve full 
confidence, because we pay unconditional respect to their 
rights; knightly honor, on the other hand, lays down that 
we are to be feared, as being determined at all costs to 
maintain our own. 

As not much reliance can be placed upon human integrity, 
the principle that it is more essential to arouse fear than to 
invite confidence would not, perhaps, be a false one, if we 
were living in a state of nature, where every man would 
have to protect himself and directly maintain his own 
rights. But in civilized life, when the state undertakes the 
protection of our person and property, the principle is no 
longer applicable: it stands, like the castles and watch- 
towers of the age when might was right, a useless and for- 
lorn object, amid well-tilled fields and frequented roads, or 
even railways. 

Accordingly, the application of knightly honor, which 
still recognizes this principle, is confined to those small 
cases of personal assault which meet with but slight punish- 
ment at the hands of the law, or even none at all, for de 
minimis non — mere trivial wrongs, committed sometimes 
only in jest. The consequence of this limited application 
of the principle is that it has forced itself into an exagger- 
ated respect for the value of the person — a respect utterly 
alien to the nature, constitution or destiny of man — which 
it has elevated into a species of sanctity: and as it con- 
siders that the state has imposed a very insufficient penalty 
on the commission of such trivial injuries, it takes upon 
itself to punish them by attacking the aggressor in life or 
limb. The whole thing manifestly rests upon an excessive 
degree of arrogant pride, which, completely forgetting 
what man really is, claims that he shall be absolutely free 
from all attack or even censure. Those who determine 
to carry out this principle by main, force, and announce, 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 60 

as their rule of action, "whoever insults or strikes me shall 
die!" ought for their pains to be banished the country.* 

As a palliative to tins rash arrogance, people are in the 
habit of giving way on everything. If two intrepid persons 
meet, and neither will give way, the slightest difference 
may cause a shower of abuse, then fisticuffs, and, finally, 
a fatal blow: so that it would really be a more decorous 
proceeding to omit the intermediate steps and appeal to 
arms at once. An appeal to arms has its own special for-i 
malities; and these have developed into a rigid and precise 
system of laws and regulations, together forming the most 
solemn farce there is — a regular temple of honor dedicated 
to folly! For if two intrepid persons dispute over some 
trivial matter (more important affairs are dealt with by 
law), one of them, the cleverer of the two, will of course 
yield; and they will agree to differ. That this is so is 
proved by the fact that common people — or, rather, the 
numerous classes of the community who do not acknowledge 
the principle of knightly honor, let any dispute run its 
natural course. Among these classes homicide is a hun- 
dred-fold rarer than among those — and they amount per- 
haps, in all, to hardly one in a thousand — who pay homage 
to the principle : and even blows are of no very frequent 
occurrence. 

Then it has been said that the manners and tone of good 
society are ultimately based upon this principle of honor, 

* Knightly honor is the child of pride and folly, and it is need, 
not pride, which is the heritage of the human race. It is a, very re- 
markable fact that this extreme form of pride should be found ex- 
clusively among the adherents of the religion which teaches the 
deepest humility. Still, this pride must not be put down to religion, 
but, rather, to the feudal system, which made every nobleman a petty 
sovereign who recognized no human judge, and learned to regard 
his person as sacred and inviolable, and any attack upon it, or any 
blow or insulting word, as an offense punishable by death The 
principle of knightly honor and of the duel was at first confined to 
the nobles, and, later on, also to officers in the army, who, enjoying 
a kind of off-and-on relationship with the upper classes, though they 
were never incorporated with them, were anxious not to be behind 
them. It is true that duels were the product of the old ordeals; but 
the latter are not the foundation, but rather the consequence and ap- 
plication of the principle of honor: the man who recognized no human 
judge appealed to the divine. Ordeals, however, are not peculiar to 
Christendom: they maybe found in great force among the Hindoos, 
especially of ancient times; and there are traces of them even now. 



fO THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

which, with its system of duels, is made out to be a bul- 
wark against the assaults of savagery and rudeness. But 
Athens, Corinth and Rome could assuredly boast of good, 
nay, excellent society, and manners and tone of a high order, 
without any support from the bogey of knightly honor. 
It is true that women did not occupy that prominent place 
in ancient society which they hold now, when conversation 
has taken on a frivolous and trifling character, to the ex- 
clusion of that weighty discourse which distinguished the 
ancients. This change has certainly contributed a great 
deal to bring about the tendency, which is observable in 
good society nowadays, to prefer personal courage to the 
possession of any other quality. The fact is that personal 
courage is really a very subordinate virtue — merely the 
distinguishing mark of a subaltern — a virtue, indeed, in 
which we are surpassed by the lower animals ; or else you 
would not hear people say, "as brave as a lion." Far from 
being the pillar of society knightly honor affords a sure 
asylum, in general for dishonesty and wickedness, and also 
for small incivilities, want of consideration and unmanner- 
liness. Rude behavior is often passed over in silence be- 
cause no one cares to risk his neck in correcting it. 

After what I have said, it will not appear strauge thai 
the dueling system is carried to the highest pitch oi 
sanguinary zeal precisely in that nation whose political and 
financial records show that they are not too honorable 
What that nation is like in its private and domestic life, is 
a question which may be best put to those who are ex- 
perienced in the matter. Their urbanity and social culture 
have long been conspicuous by their absence. 

There is no truth, then, in such pretexts. It can be 
urged with more justice that as, when you snarl at a dog, 
he snarls in return, and when you pet him, he fawns ; so 
it lies in the nature of men to return hostility by hostility, 
and to be embittered and irritated at any signs of deprecia- 
tory treatment or hatred: and, as Cicero says, "there is 
something so penetrating in the shaft of envy that even 
men of wisdom and worth find its wound a painful one ;" 
and nowhere in the world, except, perhaps, in a few 
religious sects, is an insult or a blow taken with equanimity. 
And yet a natural view of either would in no case demand 
anything more than a requital proportionate to the offense, 
and would never go the length of assiguing death as the 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. ft 

proper penalty for any one who accuses another of lying 
or stupidy or cowardice. The old German theory of blood 
for a blow is a revolting superstition of the age of chivalry. 
And in aav case the return or requital of an insult is dic- 
tated by anger, and not by any such obligation of honor 
and duty as the advocates of chivalry seek to attach to it. 
The fact is that, the greater the truth, the greater the 
Slander ; and it is clear that the slightest hint of some real 
delinquency will give much greater offense than a most 
terrible accusation which is perfectly baseless : so that a 
man who is quite sure that he has done nothing to deserve 
a reproach may treat it with contempt, and will be safe in 
doing so. The theory of honor demands that he shall show 
a susceptibility which he does not possess, and take bloody 
vengeance for insults which he cannot feel. A man must 
himself have but a poor opinion of his own worth who 
hastens to prevent the utterance of an unfavorable opinion 
by giving his enemy a black eye. 

True appreciation of his own value will make a man 
really indifferent to insult; but if lie cannot help resenting 
it, a little shrewdness and culture will enable him to save 
appearances and dissemble his anger. If we could only 
get rid of this superstition about honor — the idea, I mean, 
that it disappears when you are insulted, and can be 
restored by returning the insult ; if we could only stop 
people from thinking that wrong, brutality and insolence 
can be legalized by expressing readiness to give satisfaction, 
that is, to fight in defense of it, we should all soon come 
to the general opinion that insult and depreciation are 
like a battle in which the loser wins ; and that, as Vin- 
cenzo Monti says, abuse resembles a church procession, 
because it always returns w the »oint from wiuv* "J it sets out. 
If we could only get people to look upon insult in this 
light, we should no longer have to say something rude in 
order to prove that we are in the right. Now, unfortu- 
nately, if we want to take a serious view of any question, we 
have first of all to consider whether it will not give offense 
in some way or other to the dullard, who generally shows 
alarm and resentment at the merest sign of intelligence: 
and it may easily happen that the head which contains the 
intelligent view has to be pitted against the noddle which 
is empty of everything but narrowness and stupidity. 
If all this were done away with, intellectual superiority 



72 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

could take the leading place in society which is its due — a 
place now occupied, though people do not like to confess 
it, by excellence of physique, mere fighting pluck, in fact : 
and the natural effect of such a change would be that the 
best kind of people would have one reason the less for 
withdrawing from society. This would pave the way for 
the introduction of real courtesy and genuinely good 
society, such as undoubtedly existed in Athens, Corinth 
and Rome. If any one wants to see a good example of 
what I mean I should like him to read Xenophon's 
"Banquet." 

The last argument in defense of knightly honor no doubt 
is, that, but for its existence, the world — awful thought! 
— would be a regular bear-garden. To which I may briefly 
reply that nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a 
thousand who do not recognize the code, have often given 
and received a blow without any fatal consequences: where- 
as among the adherents of the code, a blow usually means 
death to one of the parties. But let me examine this argu- 
ment more closely. 

I have often tried to find some tenable, or at any rate, 
plausible basis — other than a merely conventional one — some 
positive reasons, that is to say, for the rooted conviction 
which a portion of mankind entertains, that a blow is a very 
dreadful thing; but I have looked for it in vain, either in 
the animal or in the rational side of human nature. A 
blow is, and always will be, a trivial physical injury which 
one man can do to another: proving, thereby, nothing more 
than his superiority in strength or skill, or that his enemy 
was off his guard. Analysis will carry us no further. The 
same knight who regards a blow from the human hand as 
the greatest of evils, if he gets a ten times harder blow from 
his horse, will give you the assurance, as he limps away in 
suppressed pain, that it is a matter of no consequence what- 
ever. So I have come to think that it is the human hand 
which is at the bottom of the mischief. And yet in a bat- 
tle the knight may get cuts and thrusts from the same hand, 
and still assure you that his wounds are not worth mention- 
ing. Now, I hear that a blow from the flat of a sword is 
not by any means so bad as a blow with a stick; and that, a 
short time ago, cadets were liable to be punished by the one 
but not the other, and that the very greatest honor of all is 
the accolade. This is all the psychological or moral basis 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 73 

that T can find; and so there is nothing left me but to pro- 
nounce the whole thing an antiquated superstition that has 
taken deep root, and one more of the many examples which 
show the force of tradition. My view is confirmed by the 
well-known fact that in China a beating with a bamboo is 
a very frequent punishment for the common people, and 
even for officials of every class; which shows that human 
nature, even in a highly civilized state, does not run in the 
same groove here and in China. 

On the contrary, an unprejudiced view of human nature 
shows that it is just as natural for man to beat as it is for 
savage animals to bite and rend in pieces, or for horned 
beasts to butt or push. Man may be said to be the animal 
that beats. Hence it is revolting to our sense of the fitness 
of things to hear, as we sometimes do, that one man has 
bitten another; on the other hand, it is a natural and every- 
day occurrence for him to get blows or give them. It is in- 
telligible enough that, as we become educated, we are glad 
to dispense with blows by a system of mutual restraint. But 
it is a cruel thing to compel a nation or a single class to re- 
gard a blow as an awful misfortune which must have death 
and murder for its consequences. There are too many- 
genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by 
imaginary misfortunes, which bring real ones in their train; 
and yet this is the precise effect of the superstition, which 
thus proves itself at once stupid and malign. 

It does not seem to me wise of governments and legis- 
lative bodies to promote any such folly by attempting to do 
away with flogging as a punishment in civil or military life. 
Their idea is that they are acting in the interests of human- 
ity; but, in point of fact, they are doing just the opposite; 
for the abolition of flogging will serve only to strengthen 
this in human and abominable superstition, to which so 
many sacrifices have already been made. For all offenses, 
except the worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the 
natural penalty; and a man who will not listen to reason will 
yield to blows. It seems to me right and proper to administer 
corporal punishment to the man who possesses nothing and 
therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put in prison be- 
cause his master's interests would suffer by the loss of his 
services. There are really no arguments against it; only 
mere talk about "the dignity of man" — talk which proceeds, 
not from any clear notions on the subject, but from the per* 



74 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

nicious superstition I have been describing. That it is a 
superstition which lies at the bottom of the whole business 
is proved by an almost laughable example. Not long ago 
in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was 
replaced by the stick. In either case the object was to 
produce physical pain; but the latter method involved no 
disgrace, and was not derogatory to honor. 

By promoting this superstition, the state is playing into 
the hands of the principle of knightly honor, and therefore 
of the duel; while at the same time it is trying, or at any 
rate it pretends that it is trying to abolish the duel by leg- 
islative enactment. As a natural consequence we find that 
this fragment of the theory that "might is right," which ha* 
comedown to us from the most savage days of the MiddleAge, 
has still in this nineteenth century a good deal of life left 
in it — more shame to us! It is high time for the principle 
to be driven out bag and baggage. Nowadays, no one is 
allowed to set dogs or cocks to fight each other — at any rate 
in England it is a penal offense — but men are plunged into 
deadly strife, against their will, by the operation of this 
ridiculous, superstitious and absurd principle which imposes 
upon us the obligation as its narrow-minded supporters and 
advocates declare of fighting with one another like gladi- 
ators, for any little trifle. Let me recommend our purists 
to adopt the expression baiting,* instead of duel, which 
probably comes to us, not from the Latin duellum but from 
the Spanish duelo — meaning suffering, nuisance, annoy- 
ance. 

In any case, we may well laugh at the pedantic excess to 
which this foolish system has been carried. It is really 
revolting that this principle, with its absurd code, can 
form a power within the state — imperium in imperio — a 
power too easily put in motion, which, recognizing no right 
but might, tyrannizes over the classes which come within 
its range, by keeping up a sort of inquisition, before which 
any one may be haled on the most flimsy pretext, and there 
and then be tried on an issue of life and death between him- 
self and his opponent. This is the lurking place from 
which every rascal, if he only belongs to the classes in ques' 
tion, may menace and even exterminate the noblest and 

best of men, who, as such, must of course be an object of 

i ' * — «.■• 

* Ritterbetze. 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLAGE. 75 

hatred to him. Our system of justice and police-protection 
has made it impossible in these days for any scoundrel in 
the street to attack us with — "Your money or your life!" 
and common sense ought now to be able to prevent rogues 
disturbing the peaceable intercourse of society by coming 
at us with — "Your honor or your life!" An end should be 
put to the burden, which weighs upon the higher classes — 
the burden, I mean, of having to be ready every moment 
to expose life and limb to the mercy of any one who takes 
it into his rascally head to be coarse, rude, foolish or mali- 
cious. It is perfectly atrocious that a pair of silly, passion- 
ate boys should be wounded, maimed or even killed, simply 
because they have had a few words. 

The strength of this tyrannical power within the state, 
and the force of the superstition, may be measured by the 
fact lhat people who are prevented from restoring their 
knightly honor by the superior or inferior rank of their 
aggressor, or anything else that puts the persons on a dif- 
ferent level, often come to a tragic-comic end by committing 
suicide in sheer despair. You may generally know a thing 
to be false and ridiculous by finding that, if it is carried to 
its logical conclusion, it results in a contradiction: and here 
too, we have a very glaring absurdity. For an officer is 
forbidden to take part in a duel; but if he is challenged 
and declines to come out, he is punished by being dismissed 
the service. 

- As I am on the matter, let me be more frank still. 
The important distinction, ^vhich is often insisted upon, 
between killing your enemy in a fair fight with equal weap- 
ons, and lying in ambush for him, is entirely a corollary of 
the fact that the power within the state, of which I have 
spoken, recognizes no other right than might, that is, the 
right of the stronger, and appeals to a "judgment of God," 
as the basis of the whole code. For to kill a man in a fair 
right, is to prove that you are superior to him in strength 
or skill; and to justify the deed, you must assume that the 
right of the stronger is really a right. 

But the truth is that, if my opponent is unable to defend 
himself, it gives me the possibility, but not by any means 
the right, of killing him. The right, the moral justification, 
must depend entirely upon the motives which I have for 
taking his life. Even supposing that I have sufficient 
motive for taking a man 's life, there is no reason why I 



76 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

should make his death depend upon whether lean shoot 01 
fence better than he. In such a case, it is immaterial in 
what way I kill him, whether I attack him from the front 
or the rear. From a moral point of view, the right of the 
stronger is no more convincing than the right of the more 
skillful; and it is skill which is employed if you murder a 
man treacherously. Might and skill are in this case equally 
right: in a duel, for instance, both the one and the other 
come into play; for a feint is only another name for treach- 
ery. If I consider myself morally justified in taking a 
man's life, it is stupid of me to try first of all whether he 
can shoot or fence better than I; as, if he can, he will not 
only have wronged me, but have taken my life into the 
bargain. 

It is Kousseau's opinion that the proper way to avenge 
an insult is, not to fight a duel with your aggressor, but to 
assassinate him — an opinion, however, which he is cautious 
enough only to barely indicate in a mysterious note to one 
of the books of his "Emile." This shows the philosopher so 
completely under the influence of the mediaeval supersti- 
tion of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to 
murder a man who accuses you of lying: while he must 
have known that every man, and himself especially, has 
deserved to have the lie given him times without number. 
The prejudice which justifies the killing of your adver- 
sary, so long as it is done in an open contest and with equal 
weapons, obviously looks upon might as really right, and a 
duel as the interference of God. The Italian who, in a fit 
of rage, falls upon his aggressor wherever he finds him, 
and despatches him without any ceremony, acts, at any 
rate, consistently and naturally: he may be cleverer, but he 
s not worse, than the duelist. If you say, I am justified 
n killing my adversary in a duel, because he is at the mo- 
ment doing his best to kill me; I can reply that it is your 
challenge which has placed him under the necessity of de- 
fending himself: and that by mutually putting it on the 
ground of self-defense, the combatants are seeking a 
plausible pretext for committing murder. I should rather 
justify the deed by the legal maxim Volenti nonfit injuria, be- 
cause the parties mutually agree to set their life upon the is- 
sue. This argument may, however, be rebutted by showing 
that the injured party is not injured volens; because it is 
this tyrannical principle of knightly honor, with its absurd 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. »<? 

code, which forcibly drags one at least of the combatants 
before a bloody inquisition. 

I have been rather prolix on the subject of knightly 
honor, but I had good reasons for being so, because the 
Augean stable of moral and intellectual enormity in this 
world can be cleaned out only with the besom of philoso- 
phy. There are two things which more than all else serve 
to make the social arrangements of modern life compare 
unfavorably with those of antiquity, by giving our age a 
gloomy, dark and sinister aspect, from which antiquity, 
fresh, natural and, as it were, in the morning of life, is 
completely free; I mean modern honor and modern disease 
— parcnobile fratrum ! which have combined to poison all 
the relations of life, whether public or private. The 
second of this noble pair extends its influence much farther 
than at first appears to be the case, as being not merely a 
physical, but also a moral disease. From the time that 
poisoned arrows have been found in Cupid's quiver, an 
estranging, hostile, nay devilish element has entered into 
the relations of men and women, like a sinister thread of 
fear and mistrust in the warp and woof of their intercourse ; 
indirectly shaking the foundations of human fellowship, 
and so more or less affecting the whole tenor of existence. 
But it would be beside my present purpose to pursue the 
subject further. 

An influence analogous to this, though working on other 
lines, is exerted by the principle of knightly honor — that 
solemn farce, unknown to the ancient world, which makes 
modern society stiff, gloomy and timid, forcing us to keep 
the strictest watch on every word that falls. Nor is this 
all. The principle is a universal Minotaur; and the 
goodly company of the sons of noble houses which it de- 
mands in yearly tribute, comes, not from one country 
alone as of old, but from every land in Europe. It is 
high time to make a regular attack upon this foolish 
system ; and that is what I am trying to do now. Would 
that these two monsters of the modern world might dis- 
appear before the end of the century ! 

Let us ho # pe that medicine may be able to find some 
means of preventing the one, and that, by clearing our 
ideas, philosophy may put an end to the other ; for it 
is only by clearing our ideas that the eril can be eradicated. 
Governments have tried to do so by legislation, and failed. 



?8 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

Still, if they are really concerned to suppress the dueling 
system ; and if the small success that has attended their 
efforts is really due only to their inability to cope with the 
evil, I do not mind proposing a law the success of which I 
am prepared to guarantee. It will involve no sanguinary 
measures, and can be put into operation without recourse 
either to the scaffold or the gallows, or to imprisonment 
for life. It is a small homcepathic pilule, with no serious 
after effects. If any man send or accept a challenge, let 
the corporal take him before the guard house, and there 
give him, in broad daylight twelve strokes with a stick 
a la Chinoise; a non-commissioned officer or a private to 
receive six. If a duel has actually taken place, the usual 
criminal proceeding should be instituted. 

A person with knightly notions might, perhaps, object 
that, if such a punishment were carried out, a man of 
honor would possibly shoot himself ; to which I should 
answer that it is better for a fool like that to shoot himself 
rather than other people. However, I know very well 
that governments are not really in earnest about putting 
down dueling. Civil officials, and much more so, officers 
in the army (except those in the highest positions), are 
paid most inadequately for the services they perform ; and 
the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented 
by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank 
and distinction. The duel is, so to speak, a very service- 
able extra-horse for people of rank : so they are trained in 
the knowledge of it at the universities. The accidents 
which happen to those who use it make up in blood for 
the deficiency of the pay. 

Just to complete the discussion, let me here mention the 
subject of national honor. It is the honor of a nation as a 
unit in the aggregate of nations. And as there is no court 
to appeal to but the court of force ; and as every nation 
must be prepared to defend its own interests, the honor of 
a nation consists in establishing the opinion, not only that 
it may be trusted (its credit), but also that it is to be 
feared. An attack upon its rights must never be allowed 
to pass unheeded. It is a combination of civic and of 
knightly honor. 

Section 5. — Fame. 
Under the heading of place in the estimation of the 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 79 

world we have put Fame ; and this we must now proceed 
to consider. 

Fame and honor are twins ; and twins, too, like Castor 
and Pollux, of whom the one was mortal and the other was 
not. Fame is the undying brother of ephemeral honor. 
I speak, of course, of the highest kind of fame, that is, of 
fame in the true and genuine sense of the word ; for, to be 
sure, there are many sorts of fame, some of which last but 
a day. Honor is concerned merely with such qualities as 
every one may be expected to show under similar circum- 
stances ; fame only of those which cannot be required of 
any man. Honor is of qualities which every one has a right 
to attribute to himself ; fame only of those which should 
be left to others to attribute. While our honor extends 
as far as people have knowledge of us ; fame runs in ad- 
vance, and makes us known wherever it finds its way. 
Every one can make a claim to honor; very few to fame, 
as being attainable only in virtue of extraordinary achieve- 
ments. 

These achievements may be of two kinds, either actions 
or work ; and so to fame there are two paths open. On 
the path of actions, a great heart is the chief recommen- 
dation ; on that of works, a great head. Each of the two 
paths has its own peculiar advantages and detriments ; and 
the chief difference between them is that actions are 
fleeting, while works remain. The influence of an action, 
be it never so noble, can last but a short time; but a work 
of genius is a living influence, beneficial and ennobling 
throughout the ages. All that can remain of actions is a 
memory, and that becomes weak and disfigured by time — a 
matter of indifference to us, until at last it is extinguished 
altogether : unless, indeed, history takes it up, and pre- 
sents it, fossilized, to posterity. Works are immortal in 
themselves, and once committed to writing, may live for- 
ever. Of Alexander the Great we have but the name and 
the record : but Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Horace 
are alive, and as directly at work to-day as they were in 
their own life-time. The "Vedas" and their "Upanis- 
hads," are still with us: but of all contemporaneous actions 
not a trace has come down to us.* 

* Accordingly it is a poor compliment, though sometimes a fash- 
ionable one, to try to pay honor to a work by calling it an action. 



80 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

Another disadvantage under winch actions labor is that 
they depend upon chance for the possibility of coming into 
existence ; and hence, the fame they win does not flow 
entirely from their intrinsic value, but also from the cir- 
cumstances which happened to lend them importance and 
luster. Again, the fame of actions, if, as in war, they are 
purely personal, depends upon the testimony of fewer 
witnesses ; and these are not always present, and even if 
present, are not always just or unbiased observers. This 
disadvantage, however, is counterbalanced by the fact that 
actions have the advantage of being of a practical char- 
acter, and, therefore, within the range of general human 
intelligence ; so that once the facts have been correctly re- 
ported, justice is immediately done ; unless, indeed, the 
motive underlying the action is not at first properly under- 
stood or appreciated. No action can be really understood 
apart from the motive which prompted it. 

It is just the contrary with works. Their inception does 
not depend upon chance, but wholly and entirely upon 
their author; and whatever they are in and for themselves, 
that they remain as long as they live. Further, there is a 
difficulty in properly judging them, which become all the 
harder, the higher their character ; often there are no 
persons competent to understand the work, and often no 
unbiased or honest critics. Their fame, however, does not 
depend upon one judge only ; they can enter an appeal to 
another. In the case of actions, as I have said, it is only 
their memory which comes down to posterity, and then 

For a work is something essentially higher in its nature. An action 
is always something based on motive, and, therefore, fragmentary 
and fleeting — a part, in £act, of that Will which is the universal and 
original element in the constitution of the world. But a great and 
beautiful work has a permanent character, as being of universal 
significance, and sprung from the Intellect, which rises, like a per 
fume, above the faults and follies of the world of Will. 

The fame of a great action has this advantage, that it generally 
starts with a loud explosion ; so loud, indeed, as to be heard all over 
Europe : whereas the fame of a great work is slow and gradual in 
its beginnings ; the noise it makes is at first slight, but it goes on 
growing greater, until at last, after a hundred years perhaps, it at- 
tains its full force ; but then it remains, because the works remain, 
for thousands of years. But in the other case, when the first explo- 
sion is over, the noise it makes grows less and less, and is heard by 
fewer and fewer persons ; until it ends by the actions having only a 
shadowy existence in the pages of history. 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 81 

only in the traditional form ; but works are handed down 
themselves, and, except when parts of them have been lost, 
in the form in which they first appeared. In this case there 
is no room for any disfigurement of the facts ; and any 
circumstances which may have prejudiced them in their 
origin, fall away with the lapse of time. Nay, it is often 
only after the lapse of time that the persons really com- 
petent to judge them appear — exceptional critics sitting in 
judgment on exceptional works, and giving their weighty 
verdicts in succession. These collectively form a perfectly 
just appreciation ; and though there are cases where it has 
taken some hundreds of years to form it, no further lapse 
of time is able to reverse the verdict; so secure and in- 
evitable is the fame of a great work. 

Whether authors ever live to see the dawn of their fame 
depends upon the chance of circumstance; and the higher and 
more important their works are, the less likelihood there is 
of their doing so. That was an incomparably fine saying of 
Seneca's, that fame follows merit as surely as the body 
casts a shadow; sometimes falling in front, and sometimes 
behind. And he goes on to remark that "though the envy 
of contemporaries be shown by universal silence, there will 
come those who will judge without enmity or favor/' From 
this remark it is manifest that even in Seneca's age there 
were rascals who understood the art of suppressing merit 
by maliciously ignoring its existence, and of concealing 
good work from the public in order to favor the bad: it is 
an art well understood in our day, too, manifesting itself, 
both then and now, in "an envious conspiracy of silence." 

Asa general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to 
last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent prod- 
ucts require time for their development. The fame which 
lasts to posterity is like an oak, of very slow growth: and 
that which endures but a little while, like plants which 
spring up in a year and then die; while false fame is like a 
fungus, shooting up in a night and perishing as soon. 

And why? For this reason; the more a man belongs to pos- 
terity, in other words, to humanity in general, the more of 
an alien he is to his contemporaries; since his work is not 
meant for them as such, but only for them in so far aa 
they form part of mankind at large; there is none of that 
familiar local color about his productions which would ap- 
peal to them: and so what he does, fails of recognition be- 



82 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

cause it is strange. People are more likely to appreciate 
the man who serves the circumstances of his own brief hour, 
or the temper of the moment — belonging to it, and living 
and dying with it. 

The general history of art and literature shows that the 
highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not 
favorably received at first; but remain in obscurity until 
they win notice from intelligence of a higher order, by 
whose influence they are brought into a position which thev 
then maintain, in virtue of the authority thus given 
them. 

If the reason of this should be asked, it will be found 
that ultimately, a man can really understand and appreci- 
ate those things only which are of like nature with himself. 
The dull person will like what is dull, and the common 
person what is common; a man whose ideas are mixed will 
be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will appeal 
to him who has no brains at all; but first of all, a man will 
like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at 
one with himself. This is a truth as old asEpicharmus of 
fabulous memory — 

&av,ua6rov ovdsv e6tl jue rdvB J ovtgd Xeyeiv 
Kai avddveiv avroi6iv avrovS, nai Sokeiv 
KaX(3<i TtEq)vv£vai- nai yap 6 hvgov hvvi 
KdXki6rov sijusv cpdivsrai, nai (3ov$ /3oi 
OvoS 8 J ovoo HaXXi6r6v [sdriv], vi 8> vi. 

The sense of this passage — for it should not be lost — is 
that we should not be surprised if people are pleased with 
themselves, and fancy that they are in good case; for to a 
dog the best thing in the world is a dog; to an ox, an ox; 
to an ass, an ass; and to a sow, a sow. 

The strongest arm is unavailing to give impetus to a 
feather-weight; for, instead of speeding on its way and hit- 
ting its mark with effect, it will soon fall to the ground, 
having expended what little energy was given to it, and 
possessing no mass of its own to be the vehicle of momen- 
tum. So it is with great and noble thoughts, nay, with 
the very masterpieces of genius when there are none but 
little, w T eak, and perverse minds to appreciate them — a 
fact which has been deplored by a chorus of the w r ise in ail 
ages. Jesus the son of Sirach, for instance, declares thai 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 83 

"He that telleth a tale to a fool speaketh to one in slumber: 
when he hath told his tale, he will say, 'What is the mat- 
ter?' " * And Hamlet says, "A knavish speech sleeps in a 
fool's ear."f And Goethe is of the same opinion,that a dull 
ear mocks at the wisest word, 

" Das glucklichste Wort es wird verhohnt, 
Wenn der Horer ein Schiefohr ist; " 

and again, that we should not be discouraged if people are 
stupid, for you can make no rings if you throw your stone 
into a marsh. 

" Du wirkest nicht, Alles bleibt so stumpf; 
Sei guter Dinge ! 
Per Stein in Sumpf 
Macht keine Ringe." 

Lichtenberg asks: "When a head and a book come into 
collision, and one sounds hollow, is it always the book?" 
And in another place: "Works like this are as a mirror; 
if an ass looks in, you cannot expect an apostle to look out." 
We should do well to remember old Gellert's fine and 
touching lament, that the best gifts of all find the fewest 
admirers, and that most men mistake the bad for the good 
— a daily evil that nothing can prevent, like a plague which 
no remedy can cure. There is but one thing to be done, 
though how difficult! — the foolish must become wise — and 
that they can never be. The value of life they never know, 
they see with the outer eye but never with the mind, and 
praise the trivial because the good is strange to them: 

" Nie kennen sie den Wertb. der Dinge, 

Ihr Auge schliesst, nicht ihr Verstand; 
Sie loben ewig das Geringe 

Wiel sie das Gutrinie gekannt." 

To the intellectual incapacity which, as Goethe says 
fails to recognize and appreciate the good which exists, 
must be added something which comes into play everywhere, 
them oral baseness of mankind, here taking the form of envy. 
The new fame that a man wins raises him afresh over 
the heads of his fellows, who are thus degraded in pro- 
portion. All conspicuous merit is obtained at the cost of 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxii., 8. . f Act., iv., sc. 2. 



84 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

f hose who possess none: or, as Goethe has ft in the "West 
ostlicher Divan," another's praise is one's own depreci< 
ation — 

"Wenn wir Andern Ekre geben 
Mussen wir uns selbst entadeln." 

We see, then, how it is that, whatever be the form which 
excellence takes, mediocrity, the common lot of by far the 
greatest number, is leagued against it in a conspiracy to re- 
sist, and if possible, to suppress it. The pass-word of this 
league is a has le merite. Nay more; those who have done 
something themselves, and enjoy a certain amount of fame, 
do not care about the appearance of a new reputation, be- 
cause its success is apt to throw theirs into the shade. 
Hence, Goethe declares that if we had to depend for our 
life upon the favor of others, we should never have lived 
at all; from their desire to appear important themselves, 
people gladly ignore our very existence; 

"Hatteick gezaudert zu werden, 
Bis man rair's Leben gegount, 
Ick.ware nock nicbt auf Erden, 
Wenn ikr sekt, wie sie sick geberden, 
Die um etwas zu sckeinen, 
Mick gerne mockten verneinen." 

Honor, on the contrary, generally meets with fair ap- 
preciation, and is not exposed to the onslaught of envy; 
nay, every man is credited with the possession of it until 
the contrary :s proved. But fame has to be won in despite 
of envy, and the tribunal which awards the laurel is com- 
posed of judges biased against the applicant from the very 
first. Honor is something which we are able and ready to 
share with every one; fame suffers encroachment and is ren- 
dered more unattainable in proportion as more people come 
by it. Further, the difficulty of winning fame by any 
given work stands in inverse ratio to the number of people 
who are likely to read it; and hence it is so mucn harder to 
become famous as the author of a learned work than as a 
writer who aspires only to amuse. It is hardest of all in 
the case of philosophical works, because the result at 
which they aim is rather vague and, at the same time, useless 
from a material point of view; they appeal chiefly to readers 
who are working on the same lines themselves. 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 85 

It is clear, then, from what I have said as to the diffi- 
culty of winning fame, that those who labor, not out of 
love for their subject, nor from pleasure in pursuing it, 
but under the stimulus of ambition, rarely or never leave 
mankind a legacy of immortal works. The man who seeks 
to do what is good and genuine, must avoid what is bad, 
and be ready to defy the opinions of the mob, nay, even to 
despise it and its misleaders. Hence the truth of the re- 
mark (especially insisted upon by Osorius de Gloria), that 
fame shuns those who seek it, and seeks those who shun it; 
for the one adapt themselves to the taste of their con- 
temporaries, and the others work in defiance of it. 

But, difficult though it be to acquire fame, it is an easy 
thing to keep it when once acquired. Here, again, fame 
js in direct opposition to honor, with which every one is 
presumably to be accredited. Honor has not to be won ; 
it must only not be lost. But there lies the difficulty ! 
For by a single unworthy action, it is gone irretrievably. 
But fame, in the proper sense of the word, can never dis- 
appear ; for the action or work by which it was acquired 
can never be undone ; and fame attaches to its author, 
even though he does nothing to deserve it anew. The 
fame which vanishes, or is outlived, proves itself thereby 
to have been spurious, in other words, unmerited, and due 
to a momentary over-estimate of a man's work ; not to 
speak of the kind of fame which Hegel enjoyed, and which 
Lichtenberg describes as "trumpeted forth by a clique of ad- 
miring under-graduates — the resounding echo of empty 
heads; such a fame as will make posterity smile when it lights 
upon a grotesque architecture of words, a fine nest with 
the birds long ago flown ; it will knock at the door of this 
decayed structure of conventionalities and find it utterly 
empty ! not even a trace of thought there to invite the 
passer-by." 

The truth is that fame means nothing but what a man 
is in comparison with others. It is essentially relative in 
character, and therefore only indirectly valuable ; for it 
vanishes the moment other people become what the famous 
man is. Absolute value can be predicated only of what a 
man possesses under any and all circumstances — here, what 
a man is directly and in himself. It is the possession of ». 
great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame oi 1* 



86 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

which is worth having, and conducive to happiness. Not 
fame, but that which deserves to be famous, is what a man 
should hold in esteem. This is, as it were, the true under- 
lying substance, and fame is only an accident, affecting 
its subject chiefly as a kind of external symptom, which 
serves to confirm his own opinion of himself. Light is not 
visible unless it meets with something to reflect it ; and 
talent is sure of itself only when its fame is noised abroad. 
But fame is not a certain symptom of merit ; because you 
can have the one without the other ; or, as Lessing nicely 
puts it, " Some people obtain fame, and others deserve it." 

It would be a miserable existence which should make its 
value or want of value depend upon what other people 
think ; but such would be the life of a hero or a genius if its 
worth consisted in fame, that is, in the applause of the 
world. Every man lives and exists on his own account, 
and, therefore, mainly in and for himself; and what he is 
and the whole manner of his being concern himself more 
than any one else ; so if he is not worth much in this re- 
spect, he cannot be worth much otherwise. The idea 
which other people form of his existence is something sec- 
ondary, derivative, exposed to all the chances of fate, and 
in the end affecting him but very indirectly. Besides, 
other people's heads are a wretched place to be the home 
of a man's true happiness — a fanciful happiness perhaps, 
but not a real one. 

And what a mixed company inhabits the Temple of 
Universal Fame ! generals, ministers, charlatans, jugglers, 
dancers, singers, millionaires and Jews ! It is a temple in 
which more sincere recognition, more genuine esteem, is 
given to the several excellences of such folk, than to 
superiority of mind, even of a high order, which obtains 
from the great majority only a verbal acknowledgment. 

From the point of view of human happiness, fame is, 
surely, nothing but a very rare and delicate morsel for the 
appetite that feeds on pride and vanity — an appetite which, 
however carefully concealed, exists to an immoderate de- 
gree in every man, and is perhaps, strongest of all in those 
who set their hearts on becoming famous at any cost. 
Such people generally have to wait some time in uncer- 
tainty as to their own value, before the opportunity comes 
which will put it to the proof and let other people. see what 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 8? 

they are made of ; but until then, they feel as if they were 
suffering secret injustice.* 

But, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter, 
an unreasonable value is set upon other people's opinion, 
and one quite disproportionate to its real worth. Hobbes 
has some strong remarks on this subject ; and no doubt he 
is quite right. " Mental pleasure," he writes, " and ecstasy 
of any kind, arise when, on comparing ourselves witli others, 
we come to the conclusion that we may think well of our- 
selves." So we can easily understand the great value 
which is always attached to fame, as worth any sacrifices if 
there is the slighest hope of attaining it. 

" Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days."f 

And again : 

" How hard it is to climb 
The heights where Fame's proud temple shines afar !" 

We can thus understand how it is that the vainest people 
in the world are always talking about la gloire, with thq 
most implicit faith in it as a stimulus to great actions and 
great works. But there can be no doubt that fame is some, 
thing secondary in its character, a mere echo or reflection 
— as it were, a shadow or symptom — of merit : and, in any 
case, what excites admiration must be of more value than 
the admiration itself. The truth is that a man is made happy, 
not by fame, but by that which brings him fame, by his 
merits, or to speak more correctly, by the disposition and 
capacity from which his merits proceed, whether they be 
moral or intellectual. The best side of a man's nature 
must of necessity be more important for him than for any 
one else : the reflection of it, the opinion which exists in 
the heads of others, is a matter that can affect him only in 

* Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired ; but those who 
admire us, even if they have every reason to do so, are slow to ex- 
oress their sentiments. Hence he is the happiest man who, no 
matter how, manages sincerely to admire himself-s-so long as other 
people leave him alone. 

f Milton " Lycidas." 



88 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

a very subordinate degree. He who deserves fame with- 
out getting it possesses by far the more important element 
of happiness, which should console him for the loss of the 
other. It is not that a man is thought to be great by 
masses of incompetent anu often infatuated people, but 
that he really is great, which should move us to envy his 
position ; and his happiness lies, not in the fact that 
posterity will hear of him, but that he is the creator of 
thoughts worthy to be treasured up and studied for hun- 
dreds of years. 

Besides, if a man has done this, he possesses something 
which cannot be wrested from him, and, unlike fame, it is 
a possession dependent entirely upon himself. If admi- 
ration were his chief aim, there would be nothing in him to 
admire. This is just what happens in the case of false, 
that is, unmerited, fame; for its recipient lives upon it 
without actually possessing the solid substratum of which 
fame is the outward and visible sign. False fame must 
often put its possessor out of conceit with himself; for the 
time may come when, in spite of the illusions born of self- 
love, he will feel giddy on the heights which he was never 
meant to climb, or look upon himself as spurious coin; and 
in the anguish of threatened discovery and well-merited 
degradation, he will read the sentence of posterity on the 
foreheads of the wise — like a man who owes his property 
to a forged will. The truest fame, the fame that comes 
after death, is never heard of by its recipient: and yet he 
is called a happy man. His happiness lay both in the pos- 
session of those great qualities which won him fame, and 
in the opportunity that was granted him of developing 
them — the leisure he had to act as he pleased, to dedicate 
himself to his favorite pursuits. It is only work done 
from the heart that ever gains the laurel. 

Greatness of soul, or wealth of intellect, is what makes a 
man happy — intellect, such as, when stamped on its pro- 
ductions, will receive the admiration of centuries to come — 
thoughts which made him happy at the time, and will in 
their turn be a source of study and delight to the noblest 
minds of the most remote posterity. The value of posthu- 
mous fume lies in deserving it; and this is its own reward. 
Whether works destined to fame attain it in the lifetime of 
their author is a chance affair, of no very great importance. 
For the average man has no critical power of his own, an^ 1 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE. 89 

is absolutely incapable of appreciating the difficulty of a 
great work. People are always swayed by authority; and 
where fame is widespread, it means that ninety-nine out of 
a hundred take it on faith alone. If a man is famed far 
and wide in his own lifetime, he will, if he is wise, not set 
too much value upon it, because it is no more than the 
echo of a few voices, which the chance of a day has touched 
in his favor. 

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of 
an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and 
that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap 
vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons 
applauding? And what would he say if he got to know 
that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to 
secure the loudest applause for the poorest player! 

It is easy to see why contemporary praise so seldom 
develops into posthumous fame. D'Alembert, in an ex- 
tremely fine description of the temple of literary fame, 
remarks that the sanctuary of the temple is inhabited by 
the great dead, who during their life had no place there, 
and by a very few living persons, who are nearly all ejected 
on their death. Let me remark, in passing, that to erect 
a monument to a man in his lifetime is as much as declar- 
ing that posterity is not to be trusted in its judgment of 
him. If a man does happen to see his own true fame, it 
can very rarely be before he is old, though there have been 
artzsts and musicians who have been exceptions to this 
rule, but very few philosophers. This is confirmed by the 
portraits of people celebrated by their works; for most of 
them are taken only after their subjects have attained celeb- 
rity, generally depicting them as old and gray; more 
especially if philosophy has been the work of their lives. 
From a eudsemonistic standpoint^ this is a very proper 
arrangement; as fame and youth are too much for a mortal 
at one and the same time. Life is such a poor business that 
the strictest economy mnst be exercised in its good things 
Youth has enough and to spare in itself, and must res. 
content with what it has. But when the delights and joys 
of life fall away in old age, as the leaves from a tree in 
autumn, fame buds forth opportunely, like a plant that u 
green in winter. Fame is, as it were, the fruit that mus1 
grow all the summer before it can be enjoyed at Yule. 
There is no greater consolation in age than the feeling of 



90 TBE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

having put the whole force of one's youth into works 
which stiJl remain young. 

Finally, let us examine a little more closely the kinds of 
fame which attach to various intellectual pursuits; for it 
is with fame of this sort that my remarks are more imme- 
diately concerned. 

I think it may be said broadly that the intellectual 
superiority it denotes consists in forming theories, that is, 
new combinations of certain facts. These facts may be of 
very different kinds; but the better they are known, and 
the more they come within every-day experience, the 
greater and wider will be the fame which is to be won by 
theorizing about them. For instance, if the facts in ques- 
tion are numbers or lines or special branches of science, 
auch as physics, zoology, botany, anatomy, or corrupt pas- 
sages in ancient authors, or undecipherable inscriptions, 
written, it may be, in some unknown alaphabet, or obscure 
points in history ; the kind of fame which may be obtained 
by correctly manipulating such facts will not extend much 
beyond those who make a study of them — a small number 
of persons, most of whom live retired lives and are envious 
of others who become famous in their special branch of 
knowledge. 

But if the facts be such as are known to every one, for 
example, the fundamental characteristics of the human 
mind or the human heart, which are shared by all alike; or 
the great physical agencies which are constantly in opera- 
tion before our eyes, or the general course of natural laws; 
the kind of fame which is to be won by spreading the 
light of a new and manifestly true theory in regard to them, 
is such as in time will extend almost all over the civilized 
world; for if the facts be such as every one can grasp, the 
theory also will be generally intelligible. But the extent 
of the fame will depend upon the difficulties overcome; and 
the more generally known the facts are, the harder it will 
be to form a theory that shall be both new and true; be- 
cause a great many heads will have been occupied with them 
and there will be little or no possibility of saying anything 
that has not been said befoie. On the other hand, facts 
which are not accessible to everybody, and can be got at 
only after much difficulty and labor, nearly always admit 
of new combinations and theories; so that, if sound under- 
standing and judgment are brought to bear upon them— 



POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLAGE. 91 

qualities which do not involve very high intellectual power 
— a man may easily be so fortunate as to light upon some 
new theory in regard to them which shall be also true. 
But fame won on such paths does not extend much beyond 
those who possess a knowledge of the facts in question. To 
solve problems of this sort requires, no doubt, a great deal 
of study and labor, if only to get at the facts: while on the 
path where the greatest and most widespread fame is to be 
won, the facts may be grasped without any labor at all. 
But just in proportion as less labor is necessary, more talent 
or genius is required; and between such qualities and the 
drudgery of research no comparison is possible, in respect 
either of their intrinsic value, or of the estimation in which 
they are held. 

And so people who feel that they possess solid intellectual 
capacity and a sound judgment, and yet cannot claim the 
highest mental powers, should not be afraid of laborious 
study; for by its aid. they may work themselves above the 
great mob of humanity who have the facts constantly be- 
fore their eyes, and reach those secluded spots which are 
accessible to learned toil. For this is a sphere where there 
are infinitely fewer rivals, and a man of only moderate 
capacity may soon find an opportunity of proclaiming a 
theory that shall be both new and true; nay, the merit of 
his discovery will partly rest upon the difficulty of coming 
at the facts. But applause from one's fellow-students, who 
are the only persons with a knowledge of the subject, 
sounds very faint to the far-off multitude. And if we fol- 
low up this sort of fame far enough, we shall at last come 
to a point where facts very difficult to get at are in them- 
selves sufficient to lay a foundation of fame, without any 
necessity for forming a theory — travels, for instance, in 
remote and little-known countries, which make a man 
famous by what he has seen, not by what he has thought. 
The great advantage of this kind of fame is that to relate 
what one has seen, is much easier than to impart one's 
thoughts and people are apt to understand descriptions 
better than ideas, reading the one more readily than the 
other; for, as Asm us says: 

" When one goes forth a- voyaging 
He has a tale to tell." 

And yet, fpjall that, a personal acquaintance with cele- 



92 TEE WISDOM OF LIFE. 

brated travelers often reminds us of a line from Horace — 
new scenes do not always mean new ideas — 

"Coeluni non animum mutant qui trans mare curri.nt."* 

But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental 
faculties, such as alone should venture on the solution of 
the hardest of all problems — those which concern nature 
as a whole and humanity in its widest range, h.e will do 
well to extend his view equally in all directions, without 
ever straying too far amid the intricacies of various by- 
paths, or invading regions little known : in other words, 
without occupying himself with special branches of knowl- 
edge, to say nothing of their petty details. There is no 
necessity for him to seek out subjects difficult of access., 
in order to escape a crowd of rivals ; the common objects 
of life will give him material for new theories at once 
serious and true ; and the service he renders will be appreci- 
ated by all those — and they form a great part of mankind 
who know the facts of which he treats. What a vast dis- 
tinction there is between students of physics, chemistry, 
anatomy, mineralogy, zoology, philology, history, and the 
men who deal with the great facts of human life, the poet 
and the philosopher ! 

* Epist. I. II. 



COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 



boaheur n'est pas chose aisee: il est tresdifficile de le trouver on nOiL 
Ot impossible de le trouver ailleurs."— Ch assort. 



COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.* 



INTRODUCTION. . 

If my object in these pages were to present a complete 
scheme of counsels and maxims for the guidance of life, 
I should have to repeat the numerous rules — some o p them 
excellent — which have been drawn up by thinkers jf all 
ages, from Theognis and Solomonf down to La Roche- 
foucauld ; and, in so doing, I should inevitably entail upon 
the reader a vast amount of well-worn commonplace. 
But the fact is that in this work I make still less claim to 
exhaust my subject than in any other of my writing? 

j^n author who makes no claims to completeness musfi 
also, in a great measure, abandon any attempt at system- 
atic arrangement. For his double loss in this respect, the 
reader may console himself by reflecting that a complete 
and systematic treatment of such a subject as the guidance 
of li. f "e could hardly fail to be a very wearisome business. 
I have simply put down those of my thoughts which appear 
to be worth communicating — thoughts which, as far as I 
know, Liave not been uttered, or, at any rate, not just in 
the same form, by any one else ; so that my remarks may 

* For convenience of publication, I have divided this translation 
of Schopenhauer's " Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit " into two 
parts ; and for the sake of appearances, a new series of chapters has 
been begun in the present volume. But it should be understood 
that there is no such division in the original, and that " The Wisdom 
of Life " and " Counsels and Maxims " form a single treatise, devoted 
to a popular exposition of the author's views on matters of practice. 
To the former volume I have prefixed some remarks which may help 
the reader to appreciate the value of Schopenhauer's teaching, and 
to determine its relation to certain well-known theories of life. 

f I refer to the proverbs and maxims ascribed, in the Old Testa- 
ment, to the king of that name. 



96 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, 

be taken as a supplement to whai has been already achieved 
in the immense field. 

However, by way of introducing some sort of order into 
the great variety of matters upon which advice will be 
given in the following pages, I shall distribute what I have 
to say under the following heads: (1) general rules ; (2) 
our relation to ourselves; (3) our relation to others ; and 
finally, (4) rules which concern our manner of life and 
our worldly circumstances. I shall conclude with some 
remarks on the changes which the various periods of life 
produce in us. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL RULES. 

§ 1. The first and foremost rule for the wise conduct 
of life seems to me to be contained in a view to which Aris- 
totle parenthetically refers in the "Nichomachean Ethics " * 
6 qjpovifxos to aXvjjLov Sicoxei ov to f/dv, or, as it may be ren- 
dered, " not pleasure, but freedom from pain is what the 
wise man will aim at." 

The truth of this remark turns upon the negative char- 
acter of happiness — the fact that pleasure is only the nega- 
tion of pain, and that pain is the positive element in life. 
Though I have given a detailed proof of this proposition 
in my chief work,f I may supply one more illustration of 
it here, drawn from a circumstance of daily occurrence. 
Suppose that, with the exception of some sore or painful 
spot, we are physically in a sound and healthy condition; 
the pain of this one spot will completely absorb our at- 
tention, causing us to lose the sense of general well-being, 
and destroying all our comfort in life. In the same way, 
when all our affairs but one turn out as we wish, the single 
instance in which our aims are frustrated is a constant 
trouble to us, even though it be something quite trivial. 
We think a great deal about it, and. very little about those 
other and more important matters in which we have been 
successful. In both these cases what has met with resist- 

*vii. (11)12. 

+ " Welt als Wille und Vorstellunir." Vol. I. p. 58. 



&ESE11AL RULES. 97 

ance is the will; in the one case as it is objectified in the 
organism, in the other, as it presents itself in the struggle 
of life; and in both, it is plain that the satisfaction of the 
will consists in nothing else than that it meets with no re- 
sistance. It is, therefore, a satisfaction which is not di*, 
rectly felt; at most, we can become conscious of it only 
when we reflect upon our condition. But that which 
checks or arrests the will is something positive; it proclaims 
its own presence. All pleasure consists in merely removing 
this check — in other words, in freeing us from its action; 
and hence pleasure is a state which can never last very 

lon £-. 

This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted 

from Aristotle, which bids us direct our aim, not toward 
securing what is pleasurable and agreeable in life, but to- 
ward avoiding, as far as possible, its innumerable evils. If 
this were not the right course to take, that saying of Vol- 
taire's "Happiness is but a dream and sorrow is real," would 
be as false as it is, in fact, true. A man who desires to 
make up the book of his life and determine where the 
balance of happiness lies, must put down in his accounts, 
not the pleasures which he has enjoyed, but the evils which 
he has escaped. That is the true method of eudsemonology 
for all eudaemonology must begin by recognizing that its 
very name is a euphemism, and that "to live happily" only 
means "to live less unhappily" — to live a tolerable life. 
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, 
but to be overcome— to be got over. There are numerous 
expressions illustrating this — such asdegere vitam, vita de- 
fungi: or in Italian si scampa cosi; or in German, man 
muss suchen durchzukommen; erwirdschon durch die Welt 
lcommen, and so on. In old age it is indeed a consolation 
to think that the work of life is over and done with. The 
happiest lot is not to have experienced the keenest delights 
or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a close 
without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To meas- 
ure the happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to 
apply a false standard. For pleasures are and remain some- 
thing negative; that they produce happiness is a delusion; 
cherished by envy to its own punishment. Pain is felt to 
be something positive, and hence its absence is the true 
standard of happiness. And if, over and above freedom 
from oaim there is also an absence of boredom, the essential 



98 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

conditions of earthly happiness are attained: for all else is 
chimerical. 

It follows from this that a man should never try to pur- 
chase pleasure at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of 
incurring it ; to do so is to pay what is positive and real 
for what is negative and illusory ; while there is a net 
profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of avoiding pain. 
In either case it is a matter of indifference whether the 
pain follows the pleasure or precedes it. While it is a com- 
plete inversion of the natural order to try and turn this 
scene of misery into a garden of pleasure, "to aim at joy and 
pleasure rather than at the greatest possible freedom from 
pain — and yet how many do it ! there is some wisdom iu 
taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind 
of hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little 
room that shall not be exposed to the fire. The foo 1 rushes 
after the pleasures of life and finds himself their dupe ; 
the wise man avoids its evils ; and even if, notwithstand- 
ing his precautions, he falls into misfortune, that is the 
fault of fate, not of his own folly. As far as he is success- 
ful in his endeavors, he cannot be said to have lived a life 
of illusion ; for the evils which he shuns are very real. 
Even if he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils, and 
makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is, in reality, 
not the worse off for that ; for all pleasures are chimerical, 
and to mourn for having lost any of them is a frivolous, 
and even ridiculous proceeding. 

The failure to recognize this truth — a failure promoted 
by optimistic ideas — is the source of much unhappiness. 
In moments free from pain, our restless wishes present, as 
it were in a mirror, the image of a happiness that has no 
counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow it ; in doing 
so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something 
undeniably real. Afterward we come to look with regret 
upon that lost state of painlessness ; it is a paradise which 
we have gambled away ; it is no longer with us, and we 
long in vain to undo what has been done. One might well 
fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the work of 
some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away 
from that painless state which forms our highest happi* 
ness. 

A careless youth may think that the world is meant to 
be enjoyed, as though it were the abode of some real or 



GENERAL RULES. 99 

positive happiness, which only those fail to attain who are 
not clever enough to overcome the difficulties that lie in 
the way. This false notion takes a stronger hold on him 
when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be de- 
ceived by outward show — the hypocrisy that characterizes 
the world from beginning to end ; on which I shall have 
gomething to say presently. The result is that his life is 
the more or less deliberate pursuit of positive happiness ; 
and happiness he takes to be equivalent to a series of 
definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he en- 
counters danger — a fact which should not be forgotten. 
He hunts for game that does not exist ; and so he ends by 
suffering some very real and positive misfortune — pain, 
distress, sickness, loss, care, poverty, shame, and all the 
thousand ills of life. Too late he discovers the trick that 
has been played upon him. 

But if the rule I have mentioned is observed, and a plan 
of life is adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain — in 
other words, by taking measures of precaution against 
want, sickness, and distress in all its for^is, the aim is a 
real one, and something may be achieved which will be 
great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving 
after the chimera of positive happiness. This 3grees with 
the opinion expressed by Goethe in the " Elective Affin- 
ities," and there put into the mouth of Mittler — the man 
who is always trying to make other people happy : " To de- 
sire to get rid of an evil is a definite object, but to desire a 
better fortune than one has is blind folly." The same 
truth is contained in that fine 'French proverb : le 
mieux est Vennemi du Men — leave well alone. And, as I 
have remarked in my chief work,* this is the leading 
thought underlying the philosophical system of the 
cynics. For what was it led the cynics to repudiate 
pleasure in every form, if it was not the fact that pain is, 
in a greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure ? 
To go out of the way of pain seemed to them so much 
easier than to secure pleasure. Deeply impressed as they 
were by the negative nature of pleasure and the positive 
nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their efforts 
to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was, 
in their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of 

* " Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. ii., cli. 16. 



100 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

pleasure, as something which served only to entrap the 
victim in order that he might be delivered over to pain. 

We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other 
words, we come into the world full claims to happiness and 
pleasure, and we cherish the fond hope of making them 
good. But, as a rule, Fate soon teaches us, in a rough and 
ready way, that we really possess nothing at all, but that 
everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of an 
unassailable right, not only to all we have or acquire, to wife 
or child, but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, eyes 
and ears, nay, even to the nose in the middle of our face. 
And in any case, after some little time, we learn by ex- 
perience that happiness and pleasure are a fata morgana, 
which, visible from afar, vanish as we approach ; that, on 
the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality, which 
makes its presence felt without any intermediary; and for 
its effect, stands in no need of illusion or the play of false 
hope. 

If the teaching of experience bears fruit in us, we soon 
give up the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, and think 
much more about making ourselves secure against the at- 
tacks of pain and suffering. We see that the best the 
world has to offer is an existence free from pain — a quiet 
tolerable life; and we confine our claims to this, as to some- 
thing we can more surely hope to achieve. For the safest 
way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be 
very happy. Merck, the friend of Goethe's youth, was con 
scious of this truth when he wrote: "It is the wretched 
way people have of setting up a claim to happiness — and 
that, too, in a measure corresponding with their desires — 
that ruins everything in this world. A man will make 
progress if he can get rid of this claim, and desire noth- 
ing but what he sees before him."* Accordingly it is ad- 
visable to put very moderate limits upon our expectations 
of pleasure, possessions, rank, honor and so on; because it 
is just this striving and struggling to be happy, to dazzle 
the world, to lead a life full of pleasure, which entail great 
misfortune. It is prudent, and wise, I say, to reduce one's 
claims, if only for the reason that it is extremely easy to be 
very unhappy; while to be very happy is not indeed dif- 

* Letters to and from Merck 



GENERAL BULKS. 101 

ficult, but quite impossible. With justice sings the poet 
of life's wisdom: 

" Auream qaisquis rnediocritatem 
Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti 
Sordibustecti, caret invidenda 
Sobrius aula. 

" Saevius ventis agitatur ingens 
Pinus: et celsae graviori casu 
Decidunt turres; feriuntque summos 
Fulgura rnontes " * 

- — the golden mean is best — to live free from the squalor of 
a mean abode, and yet not be a mark for envy. It is the 
tall pine which is cruelly ghaken by the wind, and the lofty 
towers that fall so heavily; the highest summits that arfr 
struck in the storm. 

He who has taken to heart the teaching or my philosophy 
— who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is some- 
thing which had better not hrve been, and that to disown 
and disclaim it is the highest wisdom — he will have no 
great expectations from anything or any condition in life; 
he will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor la- 
ment over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings. He 
will feel the deep truth of what Platof says: ovve n tgov 
dvBpGOrtirGov aziov ov jueydXr/S 6nov8rfi — nothing in human 
affairs is worth any great anxiety; or, as the Persian coet 
teas it: 

" Though from thy grasp all worldly things should flee. 

Grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth: 
And though a world in thy possession be, 

Joy not, for worthless are the things of earth. 
Since to that better world 'tis given to thee 

To pass, speed on, for this is nothing worth." \ 

The chief obstacle to our arriving at these salutary 
views is that hypocrisy of the world to which I have al- 
ready alluded — an hypocrisy which should be early re- 
vealed to the young. Most of the glories of the world are 

* Horace. Odes II. x. 

* "Republic," x, 604. 

* Translator's Note. — From the "Anvar-i Suhaili" — "The Lights of 
Canopus" — being the Persian version of the Tables of Bidpai," Trana- 
alted by E. B. Eastwick, ch iii. Story iv., p. 289. 



iO'l COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

mere outward show, like the scenes on a stage : thero is 
nothing real about them. Ships festooned and hung with 
pennants, firing of cannon, illuminations, beating of drums 
and blowing of trumpets, shouting and applauding — these 
are all the outward sign, the pretense and suggest ion — as 
it were the hieroglyphic — of joy : hue just there, joy is as 
a rule, not to be found ; it is the only guest who has de- 
clined to be present at the festival. Where thisguesi may 
really be found, he comes generally without invitation : 
lie is not formally announced, but slips in quietly by him- 
self sans facon ; often making his appearance under the 
most unimportant and trivial circumstances, and in the 
commonest company — anywhere, in short, but where the 
society is brilliant and distinguished. Joy is like the gold 
in the Australian mines — found only now and then, as it 
were, by the caprice of chance, and according io no rule 
or law ; oftenest in very little grains, and very seldom in 
heaps. All that outward show which I have described, is 
only an attempt to make people believe that it is really joy 
which has come to the festival ; and to produce this im- 
pression upon the spectators is, in fact, the whole object 
of it. 

"With mourning it is just the same. That long funeral 
procession, moving up so slowly ; how melancholy it looks ! 
what an endless row of carriages ! But look into them — 
they are all empty ; the coachmen of the whole town are the 
sole escort the dead man has to his grave. Eloquent 
picture of the friendship and esteem of the world ! This 
is the falsehood, the hallowness, the hypocrisy of human 
affairs ! 

Take another example — a roomful of guests in full dress, 
being received with great ceremony. You could almost 
believe that this is a noble and distinguished company ; 
but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and bore- 
dom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, 
it is a rabble — even if they all wear stars. Eeally good 
society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant 
festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at 
bottom, a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is 
there : such gatherings are in strange contrast with the 
misery and barrenness of our existence. The contrast 
brings the true condition into greater relief. Still, these 
gatherings are effective from the outside ; and that is just 



genera l n uzm 103 

their purpose. Chamfort* makes the excellent remark 
that society — les cercles, les salons, ce qu'on appelle le monde 
— is like a miserable play, or a bad opera, without any 
interest in itself, but supported for a time by mechanical 
aid, costumes and scenery. 

And so, too, with academies and chairs of philosophy. 
You have a kind of a sign-board hung out to show the 
apparent abode of wisdom : but wisdom is another guest 
who declines the invitation; she is to be found elsewhere. 
The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery, attitudes of 
devotion, insane antics — these are the pretense, the false 
show of piety. And so on. Everything in the world is 
like a hollow nut ; there is little kernel anywhere, and 
when it does exist, it is still more rare to find it in the 
shell. You may look for it elsewhere, and find it, as a 
rule, only by chance. 

§ 2. To estimate a man's condition in regard to happi- 
ness, it is necessary to asK, not what things please him, but 
yhat things trouble him: and the more trivial these things 
are in themselves, the happier the man will be. To be ir- 
ritated by trifles, a man must be well off: for in misfortune 
trifles are unfelt. 

§ 3. Care should be taken not to build the happiness 
of life upon a ''broad foundation" — not to require a great 
many things in order to be happy. For happiness on such 
a foundation is the most easily undermined; it offers many 
more opportunities for accidents; and accidents are always 
happening. The architecture of happiness follows a plan 
in this respect just the opposite of that adopted in every 
other case, where the broadest foundation offers the great- 
est security. Accordingly, to reduce your claims to the 
lowest possible degree, in comparison with your means — of 
whatever kind these may be — is the surest way of avoiding 
extreme misfortune. 

To make extensive preparations for life — no matter what 
form they may take — is one of the greatest and commonest 
of follies. Such preparations presuppose, in the first place, 

* Translator's Note. — Nicholas " Chamfort " (1741-94), a French 
Hi:seellaneous writer, whose brilliant conversation, power of sar- 
casm, and epigrammatic force, coupled with an extraordinary career, 
render him one of the most interesting and remarkable men of his 
time. Schopenhauer undoubtedly owed much to this writer, fc<? 
whom he constantly refers. 



104 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

a long life, thifull and complete term of years appointed 
to man — and how few reach it! and even if it be reached; 
it is still too short for all the plans that have been made, 
for to carry them out requires more time than was thought 
necessary at the beginning. And then how many mis- 
chances and obstacles stand in the way! how seldom the 
goal is ever reached in human affairs! And lastly even 
though the goal be reached, the changes which time 
works In us have been left out of the reckoning; we forget 
that the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment 
does not last a whole lifetime. So we often toil for things 
which are no longer suited to us when we attain them; and 
again, the years we spend in preparing for some work, un- 
consciously rob us of the power for carrying it out. How 
often it happens that a man is unable to enjoy the wealth 
which he acquired at so much trouble and risk, and that 
the fruits of his labor are reserved for others; or that he is 
incapable of filling the position which he has won after so 
many years of toil and struggle. Fortune has come too 
late for him; or, contrarily, he has come too late for fortune 
-when, for instance, he wants to achieve great things, say 
in art or literature; the popular taste has changed, it may 
be; a new generation has grown up, which takes no interest 
in his work; others have gone a shorter way and got the start 
of him. These are the facts of life which Horace must 
have had in view, when he lamented the uselessness of all 
advice; 

" quid eternis minorern 
Consiliis animuni fatigas?" * 

The cause of this commonest of all follies is that optical 
illusion of the mind from which every one suffers, making 
life, at its beginning, seem of long duration, and at its end, 
when one looks back over the course of it, how short a 
time it seems! There is some advantage in the illusion; 
but for it, no great work would ever be done. 

Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the 
landscape takes a different view fiom that which it pre- 
sented at first, and changes again, as we come nearer. This 
is just what happens — especially with our wishes. -We 
often find something else, nay, something better than what 

* Odes II. xi. 



GENERAL RULES. 101 

we were looking for: and what we look for, we often find 
on a very different path from that on which we began a 
vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure, 
happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge — a 
real and permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and il- 
lusory one. 

This is the thought that runs through "Wilhelm 
Meister," like the bass in a piece of music. In this work 
of Goethe's, we have a novel of the "intellectual" kind, 
and, therefore, superior to all others, even to Sir Walter 
Scott's, which are, one and all, "ethical;" in other words, 
they treat of human nature only from the side of the will. 
So, too, in the Zauberflote — that grotesque, but still signi- 
ficant, and even ambiguous hieroglyphic — the same thought 
is symbolized, but in great, coarse lines, much in the way 
in which scenery is painted. Here the symbol would be 
complete if Tamino were in the end to be cured of his desire 
to possess Tamina, and received, in her stead initiation into, 
the mysteries of the Temple of Wisdom. It is quite right 
for Papageno, his necessary contrast, to succeed in getting 
his Papagena. 

Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are 
in the hands of Fate, and gratefully submit to be molded 
by its teachings. They recognize that the fruit of life 
is experience, and not happiness; they become accustomed 
and content to exchange hope for insight: and, in the end, 
they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to 
learn: 

" Altro diletto che 'mparar, non provo." 

It may even be that they to some extent still follow their 
old wishes and aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the 
sake of appearances; all the while really and seriously look- 
ing for nothing but instruction; a process which lends them 
an air of genius, a trait of something contemplative and 
sublime. 

In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other 
things — gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature. 
There is a sense in which we are a 11 alchemists. 



106 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

CHAPTER II. 

OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 

§ 4. The mason employed on the building of a house 
may be quite ignorant of its general design: or, at any rate, 
he may not keep it constantly in mind. So it is with man 
in working through the days and hours of his life, he takes 
little thought of its character as a whole. 

If there is any merit or importance attaching to a man's 
career, if he lays himself out carefully for some special 
work, it is all the more necessary and advisable for him to 
turn his attention now and then to its plan, that is to say, 
the miniature sketch of its general outlines. Of course, to 
do that, he must have applied the maxim Tv£>hi 6savr6v; he 
must have made some little progress in the art of under- 
standing himself. He must know what is his real, chief, 
and foremost object in life — what it is that he most wants 
in order to be happy; and then, after that, what occupies 
the second and third place in his thoughts; he must find 
out what, on the whole, his vocation really is — the part he 
has to play, his general relation to the w r orld. If he maps 
out important work for himself on great lines, a glance at 
this miniature plan of his life will more than anything else 
stimulate, rouse and ennoble him, urge him on to action 
and keep him from false paths. 

Again, just as the traveler, on reaching a height gets a 
connected view over the road he has taken, with its many 
turns and windings; so it is only when we have completed 
a period in our life, or approach the end of it altogether, 
that we recognize the true connection between all our 
actions — what it is we have achieved, what work we have 
done. It is only then that we see the precise chain of 
cause and effect, and the exact value of all our efforts. For 
as long as we are actually engaged in the work of life, we 
always act in accordance with the nature of our character, 
under the influence of motive, and within the limits of our 
capacity — in a word, from beginning to end, under a law 
of necessity; at every moment we do just what appears to 
us right and proper. It is only afterward, when we come 
to look back at the whole course of our life and its general 
result, that we see the why and wherefore of it all. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 10? 

When we are actually doing some great deed, or creating 
some immortal work, we are not conscious of it as such; we 
think only of satisfying present aims, of fulfilling the in- 
tentions we happen to haye at the time, of doing the right 
thing at the moment. It is only when we come to view 
our life as a connected whole that our character and capac- 
ities show themselves in their true light; that we see how, 
in particular instances, some happy inspiration, as it were, 
led us to choose the only true path out of a thousand which 
might have brought us to ruin. It was our genius that 
guided us, a force felt in the affairs of the intellect as in 
those of the world; and working by its defect just in the 
same way in regard to evil and disaster. 

§ 5. Another important element in the wise Conduct of 
life is to preserve a proper proportion between our thought 
for the present and our thought for the future ; in order 
not to spoil the one by paying over-great attention to the 
other. Many live too much in the present — frivolous 
people, I mean ; others, too much in the future, ever anx- 
ious and full of care. It is seldom that a man holds the 
right balance between the two extremes. Those who strive 
and hope and live only in the future, always looking ahead 
and impatiently anticipating what is coming, as some- 
thing which will make them happy w r hen they get it, are, 
in spite of their very clever airs, exactly like those donkeys 
one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a 
stick on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it ; 
this is always just in front of them, and they keep on 
trying to get it. Such people are in a constant state of 
illusion as to their whole existence ; they go on living ad 
interim, until at last they die. 

Instead, therefore, of always thinking about our plans 
and anxiously looking to the future, or of giving ourselves 
up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the 
present is the only reality, the only certainty ; that the 
future almost always turns out contrary to our expecta- 
tions ; that the past, too, was very different from what we 
suppose it to have been. Both the past and the future are, 
on the whole, of less consequence than we think. Dis- 
tance, which makes objects look small to the outward eye, 
makes them look big to the eye of thought. The present- 
alone is true and actual ; it is the only time which pos- 
sesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively. 



108 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the 
welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable 
by its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full con- 
sciousness of its value. We shall hardly be able to do this 
if we make a wry face over the failure of our hopes in the 
past or over our anxiety for the future. It is the height of 
folly to refuse the present hour of happiness, or wantonly 
to spoil it by vexation at by-gones or uneasiness about 
what is to come. There is a time, of course, for fore- 
thought, nay, even for repentance : but when it is over let 
us think of what is past as of something to which we have 
said farewell, of necessity subduing our hearts — 

a\\a rd ukv npoTervx^ca eoc6ojhev axyvuEvoi TiEp 
Ovjuov hvi 6tt)6e66i cpiXor SajudtfavTES dvdyxy,* 

and of the future as of that which lies beyond our power, 
in the lap of the gods — 

a/l/V rjtoi filv zavza Qegov kv yovvatii uEirai.\ 

But in regard to the present let us remember Seneca's 
advice, and live each day as if it were our whole life — 
singular dies singulas vitas puta: let us make it as 
agreeable as possible, it is the only real time we have. 

Only those evils which are sure to come at a definite 
date have any right to disturb us ; and how few there are 
which fulfill this description. For evils are of two kinds ; 
either they are possible only, at most probable ; or they 
ire inevitable. Even in the case of evils which are sure 
co happen, the time at which they will happen is uncer- 
tain. A man who is always preparing for either class of 
evil will not have a moment of peace left him. So, if we 
are not to lose all comfort in life through the fear of evils 
some of which are uncertain in themselves, and others, in 
the time at which they will occur, we should look upon the 
one kind as never likely to happen, and the other as not 
likely to happen very soon. 

Xow, the less our peace of mind is disturbed by fear, 
the more likely it is to be agitated by desire and expecta- 
tion. This is the true meaning of that song of Goethe's 
which is such a favorite with every one : Ich liaV mein' 

* "Iliad," xix. 65 f Ibid, xvii. 514. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 109 

Sack* auf niclits gestellt. It is only after a man has got 
rid of all pretension, and taken refuge in mere unembel- 
lished existence, that he is able to attain- that peace of 
mind which is the foundation of human happiness. 
Peace of mind ! that is something essential to any enjoy- 
ment of the present moment ; and unless its separate 
moments are enjoyed, there is an end of life's happiness as 
& whole. We should always recollect that to-day comes 
only once, and never returns. We fancy that it will come 
again to-morrow ; but to-morrow is another day, which, 
in its turn, comes once only. We are apt to forget that 
every day is an integral, and therefore irreplaceable portion 
of life, and to look npon life as though it were a collective 
idea or name which does not suffer if one of the indi- 
viduals it covers is destroyed. 

We should be more likely to appreciate and enjoy the 
present, if, in those good days when we are well and strong, 
we did not fail to reflect how, in sickness and sorrow, every 
past hour that was free from pain and privation seemed in 
our memory so infinitely to be envied — as it were, a lost 
paradise, or some one who was only then seen to have acted 
as a friend. But we live through our days of happiness 
without noticing them ; it is only when evil comes upon 
us that we wish them back. A fhousand gay and pleasant 
hours are wasted in ill-humor ; we let them slip by unen- 
joyed, and sigh for them in vain when the sky is overcast. 
Those present moments that are bearable, be they never so 
trite and common — passed by in indifference, or, it may be, 
impatiently pushed away — those are the moments we 
should honor; never failing to remember that the ebbing 
tide is even now hurrying them into the past, where mem- 
ory will store them transfigured and shining with an im- 
perishable light — in some after-time, and above all, when 
Dur days are evil, to raise the veil and present them as the 
object of our fondest regret. 

§ 6. " Limitation always makes for happiness." We 
are happy in proportion as our range of vision, our sphere 
of work, our points of contact with the world, are restricted 
and circumscribed. We are more likely to feel worried and 
anxious if these limits are wide; for it means that our 
cares, desires and terrors are increased and intensified. 
That is why the blind are not so unhappy as we might be 
inclined to suppose, otherwise there would not be that 



11.0 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

gentle and almost serene expression of peace in their 
faces. 

Another reason why limitation makes for happiness is 
that the second half of life proves even more dreary than 
the first. As the years wear on, the horizon of our aims 
and our points of contact with the world become more ex- 
tended. In childhood our horizon is limited to the nar- 
rowest sphere about us; in youth there is already a very 
considerable widening of our view; in manhood it com- 
prises the whole range of our activity, often stretching out 
over a very distant sphere — the care, for instance, of a state 
or a nation in old age it embraces posterity. 

But even in the affairs of the intellect limitation is neces- 
sary, if we are to be happy. For the less the will is excited 
the less we suffer. We have seen that suffering is some- 
thing positive, and that happiness is only a negative con- 
dition. To limit the sphere of outward activity is to re- 
lieve the will of external stimulus: to limit the sphere of 
our intellectual efforts is to relieve the will of internal 
sources of excitement. This latter kind of limitation is at- 
tended by the disadvantage that it opens the door to bore- 
dom, which is a direct source of countless sufferings: for to 
banish boredom, a man will have recourse to any means 
that may be handy — dissipation, society, extravagance, 
gaming, and drinking, and the like, which in their turn 
bring mischief, ruin and misery in their train. Dijficiles in 
otio quies — it is difficult to keep quiet if you have noth- 
ing to do. That limitation in the sphere of outward ac- 
tivity is conducive, nay, even necessary to human happiness 
such as it is, may be seen in the fact that the only kind of 
poetry which depicts men in a happy state of life — idyllic 
poetry, I mean — always aims, as an intrinsic part of its 
treatment, at representing them in very simple and re 
stricted circumstances. It is this feeling too, which is at 
the bottom of the pleasure we take in what are called genre 
pictures. 

"Simplicity," therefore, as far as it can be attained, and 
even monotony, in our manner of life, if it does not mean 
that we are bored, will con tribute to happiness; just because 
under such circumstances, life, and consequently the bur- 
den which is the essential concomitant of life, will be least 
felt. Our existence will glide on peacefully like a stream 
which no waves or whirlpools disturb. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. \\\ 

§ 7. Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state de- 
pends, ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades 
and engrosses our consciousness. In, this respect purely 
intellectual occupation, for the mind that is capable of it, 
will, as a rule, do much more in the way of happiness than 
any form of practical life, with its constant alternations of 
success and failure, and all the shocks and torments it pro- 
duces. But it must be confessed that for such occupation 
a pre-eminent amount of intellectual capacity is necessary. 
And in this connection it may be noted that, just as a life 
devoted to ^utward activity will distract and divert a man 
from study and also deprive him of that quiet concentra- 
tion of mind which is necessary for such work; so, on the 
other hand, a long course of thought will make him more 
or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. It is advis- 
able, therefore, to suspend mental work for awhile, if cir- 
cumstances happen which demand any degree of energy in 
affairs of a practical nature. 

§ 8. To live a life that shall be entirely prudent and 
discreet, and to draw from experience all the instruction 
it contains, it is requisite to be constantly thinking back — 
to make a kind of recapitulation of what we have done, of 
our impressions and sensations, to compare our former with 
our present judgments — what we set before us and strug- 
gled to achieve, with the actual result and satisfaction we 
have obtained. To do this is to get a repetition of the private 
lessons of experience— lessons which are given to every 
one. 

Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind 
of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the com- 
mentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and in- 
tellectual knowledge, and very little experience, the result 
is like those books which have on each page two lines of 
text to forty lines of commentary. A great deal of experi- 
ence with little reflection and scanty knowledge, gives us 
books like those of the "editio Bipontina,"* where there are 
no notes and much that is unintelligible. 

The advice here given is on a par with a rule recommended 

* "Translator's Note — A series of Greek, Latin and French classics 
published at Zweibriicken in the Palatinate, from and after the year 
1779. Cf. Butter, Ueberdie Bipontmer: und die editiones Bipontinae. 



212 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

by Pythagoras — to review, every night before going to sleep 
what we have done during the day. To live at random, in 
the hurly-burly of business or pleasure, without ever reflect- 
ing upon the past — to go on, as it were, pulling cotton off 
the reel of life — is to have no clear idea of what we are 
about: and a man who lives in this state will have chaos in 
his emotions and certain confusion in his thoughts; as is 
soon manifest by the abrupt and fragmentary character of 
his conversation, which becomes a kind of mincemeat. A 
man will be all the more exposed to this fate in proportion 
as he lives a restless life in the world, amid a crowd of 
various impressions and with a correspondingly small 
amount of activity on the part of his own mind. 

And in this connection it will be in place to observe that, 
when events and circumstances which have influenced us 
pass away in the course of time, we are unable to bring 
back and renew the particlar mood or state of feeling which 
they aroused in us: but we can remember what we were led 
to say and do in regard to them; and this forms, as it were, 
the result, expression and measure of those events. We 
should, therefore, be careful to preserve the memory of our 
thoughts at important points in our life: and herein lies 
the great advantage of keeping a journal. 

§ 9. To be self-sufficient, to be all in all to one's self, to 
want for nothing, to be able to say omnia mea mecum 
porto — that is assuredly the chief qualification for happi- 
ness. Hence Aristotle's remark, 77 evSaijuoria t<Sv 
avTapx&v sen * — to be happy means to be self- 
sufficient — cannot be too often repeated. It is, at bottom, 
the same thought as is present in that very well-turned sen- 
tence from Chamfort, which I have prefixed as a motto to 
this volume. For while a man cannot reckon with cer- 
tainty upon any one but himself, the burdens and disad- 
vantages, the dangers and annoyances which arise from 
having to do with others, are not only countless but una- 
voidable. 

There is no more mistaken path to happiness than 
worldliness, revelry, high life : for the whole object of it 
is to transform our miserable existence into a succession of 
joys, delights and pleasures — a process which cannot fail 

*"Eudein,Etk." VII. ii. 37. 



UE BEL A TION TO UR8BL VE8. H3 

to result in disappointment and delusion ; on a par, in this 
respect with its obbhgaio accompaniment the interchange 
of lies.* 

All society necessarily involves, as the first condition of 
its existence, mutual accommodation and restraint upon 
the part of its members. This means that the larger it is, 
the more insipid will be its tone. A man can be himself 
only so long as he is alone ; and if he does not love solitude, 
he will not love freedom ; for it is only when he is alone 
that he is really free. Constraint is always present in 
society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance ; 
and in proportion to the greatness of a man's individuality, 
it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all 
intercourse with others demands. Solitude will be 
welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's 
personal value is large or small — the wretch feeling, 
when he is alone, the whole burden of his misery; the 
great intellect delighting in its greatness ; and every one, 
in short, being just what he is. 

Further, if a man stands high in Nature's list, it is 
natural and inevitable that he should feel solitary. It 
will be an advantage to him if his surroundings do not 
interfere with this feeling ; for if he has to see a great 
deal of other people who are not of like character with 
himself, they will exercise a disturbing influence upon 
him, adverse to his peace of mind ; they will rob him, in 
fact, of himself, and give him nothing to compensate for 
the loss. 

But while Nature sets very wide differences between 
man and man in respect both of morality and of intellect, 
society disregards and effaces them ; or, rather, it sets up 
artificial differences in their stead — gradations of rank and 
position, which are very often diametrically opposed to 
those which Nature establishes. The result of this arrange- 
ment is to elevate those whom Nature has placed low, and. 
to depress the few who stand high. These latter, then, 
usually withdraw from society, where, as soon as it is at 
all numerous, vulgarity reigns supreme. 

* As our body is concealed by the clothes we wear, so our mind is 
veiled in lies. The veil is always there, and it is only through it 
that we can sometimes guess at what a man really thinks ; just as 
from his clothes we arrive at the general shape of his body. 



114 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

What offends a great intellect in society is the equality 
of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which every 
one enjoys; while at the same time, inequality of capacity 
means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called 
good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of 
intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are 
expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience toward 
every form of folly and stupidity, pervesity and dull- 
ness while personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for 
being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellect- 
ual superiority offends by its very existence, without any 
desire to do so. 

The worst of what is called good society is not only that 
it offers us the companionship of people who are unable to 
win either our praise or our affection, but that it does not 
allow of our being that which we naturally are; it compels 
us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up, or even alter 
our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation whether 
grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is 
downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is 
absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This de- 
mands an act of severe self-denial ; we have to forfeit three- 
fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people. 
No doubt their company may be set down against our loss 
in this respect; but the more a man is worth, the more he 
will find that what he gains does not cover what he loses, 
and that the balance is on the debit side of the account; 
for the people with whom he deals are generally 
bankrupt — that is to say, there is nothing to be got from 
their society which can compensate either for its boredom, 
annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the self-denial which 
it renders necessary. Accordingly, most society is so con- 
stituted as to offer a good profit to any one who will ex- 
change it for solitude. 

Nor is this all. By way of providing a substitute for 
real — I mean intellectual — superiority, which is seldom to 
be met with, and intolerable when it is found, society has 
capriciously adopted a false kind of superiority, conven- 
tional in its character, and resting upon arbitrary principles 
— a tradition, as it were, handed down in the higher circles 
and, like a password, subject to alterations; I refer to bon 
ton fashion. Whenever this kind of superiority comes 
into collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 115 

Moreover, the presence of " good tone" means the absence 
of good sense. 

No man can be in perfect accord with any one but 
himself — not even with a friend or the partner of his life; 
differences of individuality and temperament are always 
br inging in some degree of discord, though it may be a very 
slight one. That genuine, profound peace of mind, that 
perfect tranquillity of soul, which, next to health, is the 
highest blessing the earth can give, is to be attained only 
in solitude, and, as a permanent mood, only in complete 
retirement: and then, if there is anything great and rich 
in the man's own self, his w 7 ay of life is the happiest that 
may be found in this wretched world . 

Let me speak plainly. However close the bond of friend- 
ship, love, marriage, a man, ultimately, looks to himself, 
to his own welfare alone: at most, to his child's too. The 
less necessity there is for you to come into contact with 
mankind in general, in the relations whether of business or 
of personal intimacy, the better off you are. Loneliness 
and solitude have their evils, it is true; but if you cannot 
feel them all at once, you can at least see where they lie; 
on the other hand, society is insidious in this respect; as in 
offering you what appears to be the pastime of pleasing social 
intercourse, it works great and often irreparable mischief. 
The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; 
for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind. 

It follows from this that a man is best off if he be thrown 
upon his own resources and can be all in all to himself : 
and Cicero goes so far as to say that a man who is in this 
condition cannot fail to be very happy — nemo potest non 
beatissimus esse qui est totus aphis ex sese, quique in se 
11710 ponit omnia.* The more a man has himself, the less 
others can be to him. The feeling of self-sufficiency I 
it is that which restrains those whose personal value is in 
itself great riches, from such considerable sacrifices as are 
demanded by intercourse with the world, let alone, then, 
from actually practicing self-denial by going out of their 
way to seek it. Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant 
just from the very opposite feeling; to bear others' com- 
pany is easier for them than to bear their own. Moreover, 
respect is not paid in this world to that which has real 

* " Paradoxa Stoicoruui." II. 



116 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

merit ; it is reserved for that which has none. So retire- 
ment is at once a proof and a result of being distinguished 
by the possession of meritorious qualities. It will there- 
fore show real wisdom on the part of any one who is worth 
anything in himself, to limit his requirements as may be 
necessary, in order to preserve or extend his freedom, and, 
— since a man must come into some relations with his 
fellow-men — to admit them to his intimacy as little as 
possible. 

I have said that people are rendered sociable by their in- 
ablity to endure solitude, that is to say, their own society. 
They become sick of themselves. It is this vacuity of 
soul which drives them to intercourse with others — to 
travels in foreign countries. Their mind is wanting in 
elasticity ; it has no movement of its own. and so they try 
to give it some — by drink, for instance. How much 
drunkenness is due to this cause alone ! They are always 
looking for some form of excitement, of the strongest kind 
they can bear — the excitement of being with people of like 
nature with themselves ; and if they fail in this, their 
mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into a grievous 
lethargy.* Such people, it may be said, possess only a 
small fraction of humanity in themselves ; and it requires 
a great many of them put together to make up a fair 
amount of it — to attain any degree of consciousness as men. 
A man, in the full sense of the word — a man par excel- 

* It is a well-known fact, that we can more easily bear up under 
evils which fall upon a great inany people besides ourselves. As 
boredom seems to be an evil of this kind, people band together to 
offer it a common resistance. The love of life is at bottom only the 
fear of death ; and, in the same way, the social impulse does not 
rest directly upon the love of society, but upon the fear of solitude ; 
it is not alone the charm of being in others' company that people 
seek, it is the dreary oppression of being alone — the monotony of 
their own consciousness — that they would avoid. They will do any 
Thing to escape it — even tolerate bad companions, and put up with 
the feeling of constraint which all society involves, in this case a very 
burdensome one. But if aversion to such society conquer the aver- 
sion to being alone, they become accustomed to solitude and hardened 
to its immediate effects. They no longer find solitude to be such a 
very bad thing, and settle down comfortably to it without any han- 
kering after society; and this, partly because it is only indirectly 
that they need others ' company and partly because they have be- 
come accustomed to the benefits of beii % alone. 



OUR RELATION TO OURhELVES. 117 

lence — does not represent a fraction, but a whole number ; 
he is complete in himself. 

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind 
of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed solely 
of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note : and the 
music is produced by each note coming in just at the right 
moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you 
iiave a precise illustration of the effect of most people's 
minds. How often there seems to be only one thought 
there ! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why 
people are so bored ; and also why they are so sociable, why 
they like to go about in crowds — why mankind is so 
gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that 
makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia 
laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a 
great many men together, and you may get some result — 
some music from your horns ! 

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert 
without any help from any one else, playing on a single 
instrument — a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in it- 
self. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the 
effect produced by various instruments together he pro- 
duces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. 
Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony : he is a 
soloist and performs by himself — in solitude, it may be; 
or, if in company with other instruments, only as princi- 
pal ; or for setting the tone, as in singing. However, 
those who are fond of society from time to time may profit 
by this simile, and lay it dow^n as a general rule that 
deficiency of quality in those we meet may be to some ex- 
tent compensated by an increase in quantity. One man's 
company may be quiet enough, if he is clever ; but where 
you have only ordinary people to deal with, it is advisable 
to have a great many of them, so that some advantage may 
accrue by letting them all work together — on the analogy 
of the horns ; and may Heaven grant you patience for your 
task! 

That mental vacuity and barrenness of soul to which I 
have alluded, is responsible for another misfortune. When 
men of the better class form a society for promoting some 
noble or ideal aim, the result almost always is that the in- 
numerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too, as it 
always does everywhere, like vermin — their object being 



118 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

to try and get rid of boredom, or some other defect of their 
nature; and anything that will effect that, they seize upon at 
once, without the slightest discrimination. Some of them 
will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then 
either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that 
in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of 
that which it had at first. 

This is not the only point of view from which the social 
impulse may be regarded. On cold days people manage to 
get some warmth by crowding together ; and you can warm 
your mind in the same way — by bringing it into contact 
with others. But a man who has a great deal of intellectual 
warmth in himself will stand in no need of such resources. 
I have written a little fable illustrating this : it may be 
found elsewhere.* As a general rule, it may be said that 
a man's sociability stands very nearly in inverse ratio to his 
intellectual value: to say that "so and so" is very un- 
sociable, is almost tantamount to saying that he is a man 
of great capacity. 

Solitude is doubly advantageous to such a man. Firstly 
it allows him to be with himself, and, secondly, it prevents 
him being with others — an advantage of great moment; for 
how much constraint, annoyance, and even danger there is 
in all intercourse with the world. Tout notre mal, says La 
Bruy ere, vient cle ne pouvoir etreseul. It is really a very 
risky, nay, a fatal thing, to be sociable; because it means 
contact with natures, the great majority of which are bad 

* Translator's Note. — The passage to which Schopenhauer refers 
is " Parrega ; " vol. ii. § 413. (4th. edition). The fable is of 
certain porcupines, who huddled together for warmth on a cold day ; 
but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were 
obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, 
when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of 
huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would* be best off 
by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same 
way, the need of society drives the human porcupines together — only 
to be mutally repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities 
of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover 
to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of 
Qolit^ness and fine manners ; and those who transgress it are roughl)' 
*ld — in the English phrase — "to keep their distance." By this 
arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately 
satisfied — but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some 
heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick 
other people nor get pricked himself. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 119 

fnorally, and dull or perverse, intellectually. To be un- 
sociable is not to care about sucb people; and to have 
enough in one's self to dispense with the necessity of their 
company is a great piece of good fortune; because almost 
all our sufferings spring from having to do with other people 
and that destroys the peace of mind, which, as I have said 
comes next after health in the elements of happiness. 
Peace of mind is impossible without a considerable amount 
of solitude. The cynics renounced all private property in 
order to attain the bliss of having nothing to trouble them; 
and to renounce society with the same object is the wisest 
thing a man can do. Bernardin de Saint Pierre has the 
very excellent and pertinent remark that to be sparing in 
regard to food is a means of health; in regard to society, a 
means of tranquillity — la diete des alimens nous rend la 
sante du corps, et celledes hommes la tranquillite de Vdme. 
To be soon on friendly, or even affectionate, terms with 
solitude is like winning a gold mine: but this is not some- 
thing which everybody can do. The prime reason forsocial 
intercourse is mutual need; and as soon as that is satisfied, 
boredom drives people together once more. If it were not 
for these two reasons, a man would probably elect to remain 
alone; if only because solitude is the sole condition of life 
which gives full play to that feeling of exclusive importance 
which every man has in his own eyes — as if he were the 
only person in the world! a feeling which, in the throng and 
press of real life,, soon shrivels up to nothing, getting, at 
every step, a painful dementi. From this point of view 
it may be said that solitude is the original and natural state 
of man, where, like another Adam, he is as happy as his 
nature will allow. 

But still, had Adam no father or mother? There is an- 
other sense in which solitude is not the natural state; for, 
at his entrance into the world, a man finds himself with 
parents, brothers, sisters, that is to say, in society, and not 
alone. Accordingly it cannot be said that the love of soli- 
tude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is 
rather the result of experience and reflection, and these hi 
their turn depend upon the development of intellectual 
power, and increase with the years. 

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with 
age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left 
alone for only a few minutes: and later on, to be shut up by 



120 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on 
very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few 
among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and 
then to be alone — but to spend the whole day thus would 
be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it ia 
little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes lesa 
and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has 
outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead 
to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude 
and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement 
and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intel- 
lectual capacity. 

For this tendency is not, as I have said, a purely natural 
one; it does not come into existence as a direct need of hu- 
man nature; it is rather the effect of the experience we go 
through, the product of reflection upon what our needs 
really are; proceeding, more especially, from the insight we 
attain into the wretched stuff of which most people are 
made, whether you look at their morals or their intellects. 
The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and intel- 
lectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into 
each other's hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results 
are obtained, which make intercourse with most people not 
only unpleasant but intolerable. Hence, though the world 
contains many things which are thoroughly bad, the worst 
thing in it is society. Even Voltaire, that sociable French- 
man, was obliged to admit that there are everywhere crowds 
of people not worth talking to; la terre est couverte de gens 
qui ne merit ent pas qit'on leur parte. And Petrarch gives 
a similar reason for wishing to be alone — that tender spirit! 
so strong and constant in his love of seclusion. The 
streams, the plains and woods know well, he says, how he 
has tried to escape the perverse and stupid people who have 
missed the way to heaven: 

" Cercato lio sempre solitaria vita 
(Le rive il sanno, e le campagne e i bosclii) 
Per f uggir quest' ingegni storti e loschi 
Che la strada del ciel' hanno sinarrita." 

He pursues the same strain in that delightful book of his 
"De Vita Solitaria," which seems to have given Zimmerman 
the idea of his celebrated work on "Solitude." It is the 
secondary and indirect character of the love of seclusion to 



UR MELA TION TO VMSEL VE8. 121 

which Chamfort alludes in the following passage, couched 
in his sarcastic vein: "On dit quelquefois d'un liomme 
qui 'vit seul f il ri crime pas lasociete. C'est souvent comme 
si on disait d'un liomme qu'il n' crime pas la prome- 
nade, sous le pretexte qu'il ne se promene pas volontiers 
le soir dans la foret de Bondy. 

You will find a similar sentiment expressed by the Per- 
sian poet Sadi, in his "Garden of Roses." "Since that 
time," he says, "we have taken leave of society, preferring 
the path of seclusion; for there is safety in solitude. An- 
gelus Silesius,* a very gentle and Christian writer, confesses 
to the same feeling, in his own mythical language. Herod, 
he says, is the common enemy; and when, as with Joseph, 
God warns us of danger, we fly from the world to solitude, 
from Bethlehem to Egypt; or else suffering and death awaii 
us! 

" Herodes ist em Feind; der Joseph der Verstand, 
Dem machte Gott die Gefahrirn Traum (in Geist) bekannt; 
Die Welt ist Bethlehem, Aegypten Einsamkeit, 
Fleuch, meine Seele! fleuch, sonst stirbest du vor Leid." 

Giordano Bruno also declares himself a friend of seclusion. 
Tanti uomini, he says, die in terra lianne volnto gnstare 
vita celeste, dissero con una voce, "ecce elongavi fugiens et 
mansiin solitudine" — those who in this world have desired 
a foretaste of the divine life, have always proclaimed with 
one voice: 

" Lo ! then would I wander far off: 
I would lodge in the wilderness." f 

And in the work from which I have already quoted Sadi 
says of himself: "In disgust with my friends at Damascus 
I withdraw into the desert about Jerusalem, to seek the 
society of the beasts of the field." In short, the same thing 
has been said by all whom Prometheus has formed out oJ 
better clay. What pleasure could they find in the company 
of people with whom their only common ground is just 
what is lowest and least noble in their own nature — the 

* Translator's Note — Angelus Silesius, pseudonym for Johannes 
Scheffler, a physician and mystic poet of the seventeenth century 
(1624-77). 

f Psalms, lv. 7. 



122 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

part of them that is commonplace, trivial and vulgar? 
What do they want with people who cannot rise to a higher 
level, and for whom nothing remains but to drag others 
down to theirs ? for this is what they aim at. It is an 
aristocratic feeling that is at the bottom of this propensity 
to seclusion and solitude. 

Rascals are always sociable — more's the pity! and the 
chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is 
the little pleasure he takes in others 5 company. He prefers 
solitude more and more, and, in course of time, comes to 
see that with few exceptions, the world offers no choice 
beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other. 
This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus 
Silesius, with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and 
love, was obliged to admit the truth of it. However pain- 
ful solitude may be, he says, be careful not to be vulgar; 
for then you may find a desert everywhere: 

"Die Einsamkeit ist noth: docli sei nur niclit geniein, 
So kannst du uberall in einer Wiiste sein." 

It is natural for great minds — the true teachers of hu- 
manity — to care little about the constant company of others 
just as little as the schoolmaster cares for joining in the 
gambols of the noisy crowd of boys which surrounds him. 
The mission of these great minds is to guide mankind over 
the sea of error to the haven of truth — to draw it forth from 
the dark abysses of a barbarous vulgarity up into the light 
of culture and refinement. Men of great intellect live in 
the world without really belonging to it; and so, from their 
earliest years, they feel that there is a perceptible difference 
between them and other people. But it is only gradually, 
with the lapse of years, that they come to a clear under- 
standing of their position. Their intellectual isolation is 
then reinforced by actual seclusion in their manner of life; 
they let no one approach who is not in some degree 
emancipated from the prevailing vulgarity. 

From what has been said it is obvious that the love of 
solitude is not a direct, original impulse in human nature, 
but rather something secondary and of gradual growth. 
It is the more distinguishing feature of nobler minds, 
developed not without some conquest of natural desires, 
and now and then in actual opposition to the promptings 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 123 

of Mephistopheles — bidding you exchange a morose and 
soul-destroying solitude for life among men, for society ; 
even the worst, he says, will give a sense of human fellow- 
ship : 

" Hor' auf mit deinem Gram zu spielen, 
Der, wie ein Geier, dir am Leben frisst : 
Die schlechteste Gesellschaft lasst dich fiililen 
Dass du ein Mensch mit Menschen bist." * 

To be alone is the fate of all great minds — a fate 
deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less griev- 
ous of two evils. As the years increase, it always becomes 
easier to say, Dare to be wise — sapere aucle. And after 
sixty, the inclination to be alone grows into a kind of real, 
natural instinct; for at that age everything combines in 
favor of it. The strongest impulse — the love of women's 
society — has little or no effect ; it is the sexless condition 
of old age which lays the foundation of a certain self- 
sufficiency, and that gradually absorbs all desire for others' 
company. A thousand illusions and follies are overcome; 
the active years of life are in most cases gone ; a man has 
no more expectations or plans or intentions. The genera- 
tion to which he belonged has passed away, and a new race 
has sprung up which looks upon him as essentially outside 
its sphere of activity. And then the years pass more 
quickly as we become older, and we want to devote our 
remaining time to the intellectual rather than to the prac- 
tical side of life. For, provided that the mind retains its 
faculties, the amount of knowledge and experience we have 
acquired, together with the facility we have gained in the 
use of our powers, makes it then more than ever easy and in- 
teresting to us to pursue the study of any subject. A 
thousand things become clear which were formerly 
enveloped in obscurity, and results are obtained which give 
a feeling of difficulties overcome. From long experience 
of men, we cease to expect much from them ; we find that, 
on the whole, people do not gain by a nearer acquaintance ; 
and that — apart from a few rare and fortunate exceptions 
— we have come across none but defective specimens of 
human nature which it is advisable to leave in peace. We 
are no more subject to the ordinary illusions of life ; and 

* "Goethe's "Faust " Part L. 1281-5. 



124 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

as, in individual instances, we soon see what a man is made 
of, we seldom feel any inclination to come into closer 
relations with him. Finally, isolation — our own society — 
has become a habit, as it were a second nature, with us, 
more especially if we have been on friendly terms with it 
/!rom our youth up. The love of solitude which was 
formerly indulged only at the expense of our desire for 
society, has now come to be the simple quality of our 
natural disposition — the element proper to our life, as 
water to a fish. This is why any one who possesses a 
unique individuality — unlike others and therefore neces- 
sarily isolated — feels that, as he becomes older, his position 
is no longer so burdensome as when he was youug. 

For as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old 
age is one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed 
of a certain amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most 
of all where there is real mental power: but in some degree 
by every one. It is only people of very barren and vulgar 
nature who will be just as sociable in their old age as they were 
in their youth. But then they become troublesome to a society 
to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage to 
be tolerated; whereas they were formerly in great request. 

There is another aspect of this inverse proportion between 
age and sociability — the way in which it conduces to edu- 
cation. The younger people are, the more in every respect 
they have to learn; and it is just in youth that Nature pro- 
vides a system of mutual education, so that mere inter- 
course with others, at that time of life, carries instruction 
with it. Human society, from this point of view, resembles 
a huge academy of learning, on the Bell and Lancaster 
system, opposed to the system of education by means of 
books and schools, as something artificial and contrary to 
the institutions of Nature. It is therefore a very suitable 
arrangement that, in his young days, a man should be a 
very diligent student at the place of learning provided by 
Nature herself. 

But there is nothing in life which has not some drawback 
— nihil est ab mnni parte beat urn, as Horace says; or, in the 
words of an Indian proverb, "no lotus without a stalk/' 
Seclusion, which has so many advantages, has also its lit- 
tle annoyances and drawbacks, which are small, however, in 
comparison with those of society: hence any one who is 
worth much in himself will get on better without othei 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 125 

people than with them. But among the disadvantages of 
seclusion there is one which is not so easy to see as the rest. 
It is this: when people remain indoors all day, they become 
physically very sensitive to atmospheric changes, so that 
every little draught is enough to make them ill; so with 
our temper; a long course of seclusion makes it so sensitive 
that the most trivial incidents, words, or even looks, are 
sufficient to disturb or to vex and offend us — little things 
which are unnoticed by those who live in the turmoil of 
life. 

When you find human society disagreeable and feel your- 
self justified in flying to solitude, you may be so constituted 
as to be unable to bear the depression of it for any length 
of time, which will probably be the case if you are young. 
Let me advise you, then, to form the habit of taking some 
of your solitude with you into society, to learn to be to 
some extent alone even though you are in company: not to 
say at once what you think, and, on the other hand, not 
to attach too precise a meaning to what others say; rather 
not to expect much of them, either morally or intellectually 
and to strengthen yourself in the feeling of indifference to 
their opinion, which is the surest way of always practicing 
a praiseworthy toleration. If you do that, you will not 
live so much with other people, though you may appear to 
move among them; your relation to them will be of purely 
objective character. This precaution will keep you from 
too close contact with society, and therefore secure you 
against being contaminated or even outraged by it. * Soci- 
ety is in this respect like a fire — the wise man warming 
himself at a proper distance from it; not coming too close 
like the fool, who, on getting scorched, runs away and 
shivers in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire 
burns. 

§ 10. Envy is natural to man: and still, it is at once a 
vice and a source of misery. f We should treat it as the 

* This restricted, or, as it were, entrenched kind of sociability has 
been dramatically illustrated in a play — well worth reading — of Mora- 
tin's, entitled "El Cafe o sea la Comedia Nuova" (The Cafe or the 
New Comedy), chiefly by one of the characters, Don Pedro, and es- 
pecially in the second and third scenes of the first act. 

f Envy shows how unhappy people are: and in their constant atten- 
tion to what others do and leave undone, how much they are bored. 



126 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

enemy of our happiness, and stifle it like an evil thought. 
This is the advice given by Seneca; as he well puts it, we 
shall be pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self- 
torture of comparing our own lot with some other and hap- 
pier one — nostra nos sine comparatione delectent; nun- 
quam exit felix quern torquehit felicior.* And again: 
quum adspexeris quot te antecedant, cogita quot se- 
qnantur\ — if a great many people appear to be better off 
than yourself, think how many there are in a worse position. 
It is a fact that if real calamity comes upon us, the most 
effective consolation — though it springs from the same 
source as envy — is just the thought of greater misfortunes 
than ours; and the next best is the society of those who are 
in the same ill luck as we — the partners of our sorrows. 

So much for the envy which we may feel toward others. 
As regards the envy which we may excite in them, it should 
always be remembered that no form of hatred is so impla- 
cable as the hatred that comes |rom envy; and therefore we 
should always carefully refrain from doing anything to 
rouse it; nay, as with many another form of vice, it is better 
altogether to renounce any pleasure there may *be in it be- 
cause of the serious nature of its consequences. 

Aristocracies are of three kinds: (1) of birth and rank; (2) 
of wealth; and (3) of intellect. The last is really the most 
distinguished of the three, and its claim to occupy the first 
position comes to be recognized, if it is only allowed time 
to work. So eminent a king as Frederick the Great admit- 
ted it — les dmes privilegiees rangent a Vegal des souverains, 
as he said to his chamberlain, when the latter expressed hia 
surprise that Voltaire should have a seat at the table re- 
served for kings and princes, while ministers and general/ 
were relegated to the chamberlain's. 

Every one of these aristocracies is surrounded by a hosi 
of envious persons. If you belong to one of them, they 
will be secretly embittered against you ; and unless they 
are restrained by fear, they will always be anxious to let 
you understand that you are no better than they. It is by 
their anxiety to let you know this, that they betray how 
greatly they are conscious that the opposite is the truth. 

The line of conduct to be pursued if you are exposed to 
envy is to keep the envious persons at a distance, and, 

* "De T ra:" iii., 80. t "Epist.." xv. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 12? 

as far as possible, avoid all contact with them, so that 
there may be l wide gulf fixed between yon and them ; if 
this cannot be done, to bear their attacks with the greatest 
composure. In the latter case, the very thing that pro- 
vokes the attack will also neutralize it. This is what 
appears to be generally done. 

The members of one of these aristocracies usually g^t on 
very well with those of another, and there is no call for 
envy between them, because their several privileges effect 
an equipoise. 

§ 11. Give mature and repeated consideration to any 
plan before you proceed to carry it out ; and even after 
you have thoroughly turned it over in your mind, make 
some concession to the incompetency of human judgment; 
for it may always happen that circumstances which cannot 
be investigated or foreseeu, will come in and upset the 
whole of your calculation. This is a reflection that will 
always influence the negative side of the balance — a kind 
of warning to refrain from unnecessary action in matters 
of importance — quieta nonmovere. But having once made 
up your mind and begun your work, you must let it run 
its course and abide the result — not worry yourself by 
fresh reflections on what is already accomplished, or by a 
renewal of your scruples on the score of possible danger : 
free your mind from the subject altogether, and refuse to 
go into it again, secure in the thought that you gave it 
mature attention at the proper time. This is the same ad- 
vice as is given by an Italian proverb — legala bene e pot 
lascia la andare — which Goethe has translated thus : see 
well to your girths, and then ride on boldly.* 

And if, notwithstanding that, you fail, it is because all 
human affairs are the sport of chance and error. Socrates, 
the wisest of men, needed the warning voice of his good 
genius, or daiuoviov to enable him to do what was right in 
regard to his own personal affairs, or, at any rate, to avoid 
mistakes ; which argues that the human intellect is incom- 
petent for the purpose. There is a saying — which is re- 
ported to have originated with one the popes — that when 

* It may be observed, in passing, that a great many of the maxims 
which Goethe puts under the head of Proverbial, are translations 
from the Italian. 



128 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

misfortune happens to us, the blame of it, at least in some 
degree, attaches to ourselves. If this is not true absolutely 
and in every instance, it is certainly true in the great 
majority of cases. It even looks as if this truth had a 
great deal to do with the effort people make as far as possi- 
ble to conceal their misfortunes, and to put the best face 
chev can upon them, for fear lest their misfortunes may 
show how much they are to blame. 

§ 12. In the case of a misfortune which has already 
happened and therefore cannot be altered, you should not 
allow yourself to think that it might have been otherwise ; 
still less, that it might have been avoided by such and 
such means ; for reflections of this kind will only add 
to your distress and rnake it intolerable, so that you w T ill 
become a tormentor of yourself — kavrovriiiGopovpLEvos. It is 
better to follow the example of King David ; who, as long 
as his son lay on the bed of sickness, assailed Jehovah with 
unceasing supplications and entreaties for his recovery ; 
but when he was dead, snapped his fingers and thought no 
more of it. If you are not light-hearted enough for that, you 
can take refuge in fatalism, and have the great truth 
revealed to you that everything which happens is the result 
of necessity, and therefore inevitable. 

However good this advice may be, it is one-sided and 
partial. In relieving and quieting us for the moment, it 
is no doubt effective enough ; but when our misfortunes 
have resulted — as is usually the case — from our own care- 
lessness or folly, or, at any rate, partly by our own fault, 
it is a good thing to consider how they might have been 
avoided, and to consider it often in spite of its being a 
tender subject — a salutary form of self-discipline, which 
will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we 
have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we 
generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to 
excuse or extenuate them ; we should admit to ourselves 
that we have .committed faults, and open our eyes wide to 
all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to 
avoid them in time to come. To be sure, that means a 
great deal of self-inflicted pain, in the shape of discontent, 
but it should be remembered that to spare the rod is to 
spoil the child — 6 y.r) SapeiS avBpa)7toi ov 7t-*i2t:vErai* 



OUR RELATION TO OURbELVES. 129 

§ 13. In all matters affecting our weal or woe, we should 
be careful not to let our imagination run away with us, 
and build no castles in the air. In the first place, they are 
expensive to build, because we have to pull them down 
again immediately, and that is a source of grief. We 
should be still more on our guard against distressing our 
hearts by depicting possible misfortunes. If these were 
misfortunes of a purely imaginary kind, or very remote 
and unlikely, we should at once see, on awaking from our 
dream, that the whole thing was mere illusion ; we should re- 
joice all the more in a reality better than our dreams, or, 
at most, be warned against misfortunes which, though very 
remote, were still possible. These, however, are not the 
sort of playthings in which imagination delights ; it is only 
in idle hours that we build castles in the-air, and they are 
always of a pleasing description. The matter which goes 
to form gloomy dreams are mischances which to some ex- 
tent really threaten us, though it be from some distance ; 
imagination makes them look larger and nearer and more 
terrible than they are in reality. This is a kind of dream 
#hich cannot be so readily shaken off on awaking as a 
pleasant one ; for a pleasant dream is soon dispelled by 
reality, leaving, at most, a feeble hope lying in the lap of 
possibility. When we have abandoned ourselves to a fit of 
the blues, visions are conjured up which do not so easily 
vanish again ; for it is always just possible that the visions 
may be realized. But we are not always able to estimate the 
exact degree of possibility : possibility may easily pass into 
probability ; and thus we deliver ourselves up to torture. 
Therefore we should be careful not to be over-anxious on 
any matter affecting our weal or our woe, not to carry our 
anxiety to unreasonable or injudicious limits ; but coolly 
and dispassionately to deliberate upon the matter, as 
though it were an abstract question which did not touch us 
in particular. We should give no play to imagination 
here ; for imagination is not judgment — it only conjures 
up visions, inducing an unprofitable and often very painful 
mood. 

The rule on which I am here insisting should be most 
carefully observed toward evening. For as darkness 
makes us timid and apt to see terrifying shapes everywhere, 
there is somethiug similar in the effect of indistinct 
thought ; and uncertainty always brings with it a sense of 



130 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

danger. Hence, toward evening, when onr powers of 
thought and judgment are relaxed — at the hour, as it were, 
of subjective darkness — the intellect becomes tired, easily 
confused, and unable to get at the bottom of things ; and 
if, in that state, we meditate on matters of personal interest 
to ourselves, they soon assume a dangerous and terrifying 
aspect. This is mostly the case at night, when we are in 
bed ; for then the mind is fully relaxed, and the power of 
judgment quite unequal to its duties ; but imagination is 
still awake. Night gives a black look to everything, what- 
ever it may be. This is why our thoughts, just before we 
go to sleep, or as we lie awake through the hours of the 
night, are usually such confusions and perversions of facts 
as dreams themselves ; and when our thoughts at that 
time are concentrated upon our own concerns, they are 
generally as black and monstrous as possible. In the 
morning all such nightmares vanish like dreams ; as the 
Spanish proverb has it, noche tinta, bianco el dia — the 
night is colored, the day is white. 

But even toward nightfall, as soon as the candles are lit, 
the mind, like the eye, no longer sees things so clearly as 
by day ; it is a time unsuited to serious meditation, especi- 
ally on unpleasant subjects. The morning is the proper 
time for that — as indeed for all efforts without exception, 
whether mental or bodily. For the morning is the youth 
of the day, when everything is bright, fresh and easy of 
attainment ; we feel strong then, and all our faculties are 
completely at our disposal. Do net shorten the morning 
by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations 
or in talk ; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a 
certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age : we • are 
languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life; every 
waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a 
little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death. 

But condition of health, sleep, nourishment, temperature 
weather, surroundings, and much else that is purely ex- 
ternal, have, in general, an important influence upon our 
mood and therefore upon our thoughts. Hence both our 
view of any matter and our capacity for any work are very 
much subject to time and place. So it is best to profit by 
a good mood — for how seldom ifc - ^omes — 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 131 

"Nehnit die gute Stimrnung wahr, 
Dennsie kommt so selten." * 

We are not always able to form new ideas about our sur- 
roundings, or to command original thoughts; they come if 
they will, and when they will. And so, too, we cannot al- 
ways succeed in completely considering some personal mat- 
ter at the precise time at which we have determined before- 
hand to consider it, and just when we set ourselves to do 
so. For the peculiar train of thought which is favorable to 
it may suddenly become active without any special call be- 
ing made upon it, and we may then follow it up with keen 
interest. In this way reflection, too, chooses its own 
time. 

This reining-in of the imagination which I am recom- 
mending, will also forbid us to summon up the memory of 
past misfortune, to paint a dark picture of the injustice or 
barm that has been done us, the losses we have sustained, 
the insults, slights and annoyances to which we have been 
exposed; for to do that is to rouse into fresh life all those 
hateful passions long laid asleep — the anger and resentment 
which disturb and pollute our nature. In an excellent par- 
able, Proclus, the Neoplatonist, points out how in every 
town the mob dwell side by side with those who are rich and 
distinguished: so, too, in every man, be he never so noble 
and dignified, there is, in the depths of his nature, a mob 
of low and vulgar desires which constitute him an animal. 
It will not do to let this mob revolt or even so much as peep 
forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its 
rebel leaders are those flights of imagination which I have 
been describing. The smallest annoyance whether it comes 
from our fellow-men or from the things around us, may 
swell up into a monster of dreadful aspect, putting us at 
our wits' end — and all because we go on brooding over our 
troubles and painting them in the most glaring colors and 
on the largest scale. It is much better to take a very calm 
and prosaic view of what is disagreeable; for that is the 
easiest way of bearing it. 

If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit 
your field of vision and shut out the world. And, in the 
same way, the people or the things which stand nearest, 
even though they are of the very smallest consequence, are 

* Goethe 



132 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

apt to claim an amount of attention much beyond their due v 
occupying us disagreeably, and leaving no room for serious 
thoughts and affairs of importance. We ought to work 
against this tendency. 

§ 14. The sight of things which do not belong to us is 
very apt to raise the thought: "Ah, if that were ouly mine!" 
making us sensible of our privation. Instead of that we 
should do better by more frequently putting to ourselves 
the opposite case: "Ah, if that were not mine!" What I 
mean is that we should sometimes try to look upon our pos- 
sessions in the light in which they would appear if we had 
lost them; whatever they may be, property, health, friends, 
a wife or child or some one else we love, our horse or our 
dog — it is usually only when we have lost them that we be- 
gin to find out their value. But if we come to look at 
things in the way I recommend, we shall be doubly the 
gainers; we shall at once get more pleasure out of them than 
we did before, and we shall do everything in our power to 
prevent the loss of them; for instance, by not risking our 
property, or angering our friends, or exposing our wives to 
temptation, or being careless about our children's health, 
and so on. 

We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the 
present by speculating upon our chances of success in the 
future; a process which leads us to invent a great many 
chimerical hopes. Every one of them contains the germ of 
illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when our hopes 
are shattered by the hard facts of life. 

It is less hurtful to take the chances of misfortune as a 
theme for speculation: because in doing so, we provide our- 
selves at once with measures of precaution against it, and a 
pleasant surprise when it fails to make its appearance. Is 
it not a fact that we always feel a marked improvement in 
our spirits when we begin to get over a period of anxiety? 
I may go further and say that there is some use in occasion- 
ally looking upon terrible misfortunes — such as might hap- 
pen to us — as though they had actually happened, for then 
the trivial reverses which subsequently come in reality, are 
much easier to bear. It is a source of consolation to look 
back upon those great misfortunes which never happened. 
But in following out this rule, care must be taken not to 
neglect what I have said in the preceding section- 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 133 

§ 15. The things which engage our attention — whether 
they are matters of business or ordinary events — are of such 
diverse kinds, that, if taken quite separately and in no fixed 
order or relation, they present a medley of the most glaring 
coutrasts, with nothing in common, except that they one 
and all aifect us in particular. There must be acorrespond- 
ing abruptness in the thoughts and anxieties which these 
various matters arouse in us, if our thoughts are to be in 
keeping with their various subjects. Therefore, in setting 
about anything, the first step is to withdraw our attention 
from everything else; this will enable us to attend to each 
matter at its own time, and to enjoy or put up with it, 
quite apart from any thought of our remaining interests. 
Our thoughts must be arranged, as it were, in little drawers 
so that we may open one without disturbing any of the 
others. 

In this way we can keep the heavy burden of anxiety from 
weighing upon us so much as to spoil the little pleasures of 
the present, or from robbing us of our rest; otherwise the 
consideration of one matter will interfere with every other, 
and attention to some important business may lead us to 
neglect many affairs which happen to be of less moment. 
It is most important for any one who is capable of higher 
and nobler thoughts to keep his mind from being so com- 
pletely engrossed with private affairs and vulgar troubles as 
to let them take up all his attention and crowd out worthier 
matter; for that is, in a very real sense, to lose sight of the 
true end of life — propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. 

Of course for this — as for so much else — self-control is 
necessary; without it, we cannot manage ourselves in the 
way I have described. And self-control may not appear so 
very difficult, if we consider that every man has to submit 
to a great deal of very severe control on the part of his sur« 
roundings, and that without it no form of existence is pos- 
sible. Further, a little self-control at the right moment 
may prevent much subsequent compulsion at the hands of 
others; just as a very small section of a circle close to the 
center may correspond to a part near the circumference a 
hundred times as large. Nothing will protect us from 
external compulsion so much as the control of ourselves; 
and as Seneca says, to submit yourself to reason is the way 
to make everything else submit to you — si tiiivis omnia 
suty'icere, te subjieee ndioni. Self-control, too, is something 



134 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

which we have in our own power; and if the worst comes 
to the worst, and it touches us in a very sensitive part, we 
can always relax its severity. But other people will pay no 
regard to our feelings, if they have to use compulsion, and 
we shall be treated without pity or mercy. Therefore it 
will be prudent to anticipate compulsion by self-control. 

§ 16. We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, 
moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual 
?an attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is 
worth having: and that, on the other hand, every one must 
Incur many of the ills of life; in a word, we must bear and 
forbear — abstinere et sustinere; and if we fail to observe 
this rule, no position of wealth or power will prevent us 
from feeling wretched. This is what Horace means when 
he recommends us to study carefully and inquire diligently 
what will best promote a tranquil life — not to be always 
agitated by fruitless desires and fears and hopes for things, 
which, after all, are not worth very much: 

• ' Inter cuncta leges et percontabere doctos 
Qua ratione queas traducere leniter aevum: 
Ne te semper inops agitet vexetque cupido, 
Ne pavor, et rerum raediocriter utilium spes." * 

§ 17. Life consists in movement, says Aristotle; and he is 
obviously right. We exist, physically, "because our organism 
is the seat of constant motion; and if we are to exist intel- 
lectually, it can only be by means of continual occupation 
— no matter with what so long as it is some form of practical 
or mental activity. You may see that this is so by the way 
in which people who have no work or nothing to think 
about immediately begin to beat the devil's tattoo with their 
knuckles or a stick or anything that comes handy. The 
truth is, that our nature is essentially restless in its char- 
acter; we very soon get tired of having nothing to do; it is 
intolerable boredom. This impulse to activity should be 
regulated, and some sort of method introduced into it, 
which of itself will enhance the satisfication we obtain. 
Activity — doing something, if possible creating something, 
at any rate learning something — how fortunate it is that 
men cannot exist without that! A man wants to use hia 

* Epist. I. xviii. 97. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 135 

strength, to see, if he can, what effect it will produce; and 
he will get the most complete satisfaction of this desire if 
he can make or construct something — be it a book or a 
basket. There is a direct pleasure in seeing work grow un- 
der one's hands day by day, until at last it is finished. This 
is the pleasure attaching to a work of art or a manuscript, 
or even mere manual labor; and, of course, the higher the 
work, the greater pleasure it will give. 

From this point of view, those are happiest of all who 
are conscious of the power to produce great works ani- 
mated by some significant purpose : it gives a higher kind 
of interest — a sort of rare flavor — to the whole of their 
life, which, by its absence from the life 01 the ordinary 
man, makes it, in comparison, something very insipid. 
For richly endowed natures, life and the world have a 
special interest beyond the mere everyday personal interest 
which so many others share ; and something higher than 
that — a formal interest. It is from life and the world 
that they get the material for their works ; and as soon as 
they are freed from the pressure of personal needs, it is to 
the diligent collection of material that they devote their 
whole existence. So with their intellect : it is to some ex- 
tent of a twofold character, and devoted partly to the 
ordinary affairs of every day — those matters of will which 
are common to them and the rest of mankind, and partly 
to their peculiar work — the pure and objective contempla- 
tion of existence. And while, on the stage of the world, 
most men play their little part and then pass away, thegen- 
mis lives a double life, at once an actor and a spectator. 

Let every one, then, do something, according to the 
measure of his capacities. To have no regular work, no 
set sphere of activity — what a miserable thing it is ! How 
often long travels undertaken for pleasure make a man 
downright unhappy ; because the absence of anything that 
can be called occupation forces him, as it were, out of his 
right element. Effort, struggles with difficulties ! that is 
as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole. 
To have all his wants satisfied is something intolerable — the 
feeling of stagnation which comes from pleasures that last 
too long. To overcome difficulties is to experience the full 
delight of existence, no matter where the obstacles are en- 
countered ; whether in the affairs of life, in commerce or 
business; or in mental effort — the spirit of inquiry that 



/36 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

tries to master its subject. There is always something 
pleasurable in the struggle and the victory. And if a maiv 
has no opportunity to excite himself, he will do what he 
can to create one, and according to his individual bent, he 
will hunt or play cup and ball ; or led on by this unsus- 
pected element in his nature, he will pick a quarrel with 
some one, or hatch a plot or intrigue, or take to swindling 
and rascally courses generally— all to put an end to 
a state of repose which is intolerable. As I have remarked, 
difficilis in otio quies — it is difficult to keep quiet if you 
have nothing to do. 

§ 18. A man should avoid being led on by the phantoms 
of his imagination. This is not the same thing as to sub- 
mit to the guidance of ideas clearly thought out : and yet 
these are rules of life which most people pervert. If you 
examine closely into the circumstances which, in any 
deliberation, ultimately turn the scale in favor of some 
particular course, you will generally find that the decision 
is influenced, not by any clear arrangement of ideas lead- 
ing to a formal judgment, but by some fanciful picture 
which seems to stand for one of the alternatives in ques- 
tion. 

In one of Voltaire's or Diderot's romances — I forget the 
precise reference — the hero, standing like a young Her- 
cules at the parting of ways, can see no other represen- 
tation of Virtue than his old tutor holding a snuff-box in 
his left hand, from which he takes a pinch and moralizes ; 
while Vice appears in the shape of his mother's chamber- 
maid. It is in youth, more especially, that the goal of our 
efforts comes to be a fanciful picture of happiness, which 
continues to hover before our eyes sometimes for half and 
even for the whole of our life — a sort of mocking spirit ; 
-for when we think our dream is to be realized, the picture 
fades away, leaving us the knowledge that nothing of what 
it promised is actually accomplished. How often this is 
so with the visions of domesticity — the detailed picture of 
what our home will be like ; or of life among our fellow- 
citizens and in society ; or, again, of living in the country 
— the kind of house we shall have, its surroundings, the 
marks of honor and respect that will be paid to us, and so 
on — whatever our hobby may be ; chaqu fou a samarotte. 
It is ©ften the same, too, with our dreams about one we 



UJR HELA TION TO URSEL VE8. 137 

love. And this is all quite natural ; for the visions we 
conjure up affect ns directly, as though they were real ob- 
jects : and so they exercise a more immediate influence 
upon our will than an abstract idea, which gives merely a 
vague, genera] outline, devoid of details; and the details 
are just the real part of it. We can be only indirectly 
affected by an abstract idea, and yet it is the abstract idea 
alone which will do as much as it promises ; and it is the 
function of education to teach us to put our trust in it. 
Of course the abstract idea must be occasionally explained 
— paraphrased, as it were — by the aid of pictures; but 
discreetly, cum grano salis. 

§ 19. The preceding rule may be taken as a special case 
of the more general maxim, that a man should never let 
himself be mastered by the impressions of the moment, or 
indeed by outward appearances at all, which are incom- 
parably more powerful in their effects than the mere play 
of thought or a train of ideas ; not because these momentary 
impressions are rich in virtue of the data they supply — it 
is often just the contrary — but because they are something 
palpable to the senses and direct in their working; they 
forcibly invade our mind, disturbing our repose and shafc 
tering our resolutions. 

It is easy to understand that the thing which lies before 
our very eyes will produce the whole of its effect at once, but 
that time and leisure are necessary for the working of thought 
and the appreciation of argument, as it is impossible to 
think of everything at one and the same moment. This is 
why we are so allured by pleasure, in spite of all our deter- 
mination to resist it; or so much annoyed by a criticism, 
Rven though we know that its author is totally incompetent 
to judge; or so irritated by an insult, though it comes from 
some very contemptible quarter. In the same way, to men- 
tion no other instances, ten reasons for thinking that there 
is no danger may be outweighed by one mistaken notion 
that it is actually at hand. All this shows the radical un- 
reason of human nature. Women frequently succumb 
altogether to this predominating influence of present impres- 
sions, and there are few men so overweighted with reason 
as to escape suffering from a similar cause. 

If it is impossible to resist the effects of some external 
influence by the mere play of thought, the best thing to dd 



138 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

is to neutralize it by some contrary influence; for example, 
the effect of an insult may be overcome by seeking the 
society of those who have a good opinion of us; and the un- 
pleasant sensation of imminent danger may be avoided by 
fixing our attention on the means of warding it off. Leib- 
nitz * tells of an Italian who managed to bear up under the 
tortures of the rack by never for a moment ceasing to think 
of the gallows which would have awaited him, had he re- 
vealed his secret; he kept on crying out: "I see it! I see it!" 
— afterward explaining that this was part of his plan. 

It is from such reason as this, that we find it so difficult 
to stand alone in a matter of opinion — not to be made ir- 
resolute by the fact that every one else disagrees with us 
and acts accordingly, even though we are quite sure that they 
are in the wrong. Take the case of a fugitive king who is 
trying to avoid capture; how much consolation he must find 
in the ceremonious and submissive attitude of a faithful fol- 
lower, exhibited secretly so as not co betrav his master's 
strict incognito; it must be almost necessnry to prevent hi in 
doubting his own existence. 

§ 20. In the first part of this work I have insisted upon 
the great value of health as the chief and most important 
element in happiness. Let me emphasize and confirm what 
I have there said by giving a few general rules as to its 
preservation. 

The way to harden the body is to impose a great deal of 
labor and effort upon it in the daysotgood health — to exer- 
cise it, both as a whole and in its several parts, and to habitu- 
ate it to withstand all kinds of noxious influences. But on 
the appearance of any illness or disorder, either in the body 
as a whole or in any of its parts, a contrary course should 
be takeu, and every means used to nurse the body, or the 
part of it which is affected, and to spare it any effort; for 
what is ailing and debilitated cannot be hardened. 

The muscles may be strengthened by a vigorous use of 
chem ; but not so the nerves ; they are weakened by it. 
Therefore, while exercising the muscles in every way that 
is suitable, care should be take to spare the nerves as much 
as possible. The eyes, for instance, should be protected 
from too strong a light — especially when it is is reflected 

* "Nouveaux Essais." Li v. I. ch. 2 Sec. 11. 



OUR RELA1I0N TO OURSELVES. 139 

light — from any straining of them in the dark, or from 
the long-continued examination of minute objects ; 
and the ears from too loud sounds. Above all, the brain 
should never be forced, or used too much, or at the wrong 
time ; let it have a rest during digestion ; for then the 
same vital energy which forms thoughts in the brain has a 
great deal of work to do elsewhere — I mean in the digest- 
ive organs, where it prepares chyme and chyle. For simi- 
lar reasons, the brain should never be used during, or 
immediately after, violent muscular exercise. For the 
motor nerves are in this respect on a par with the sensory 
nerves ; the pain felt when a limb is wounded has its seat 
in the brain ; and, in the same way, it is not really our 
legs and arms which work and move — it is the brain, or, 
more strictly, that part of it which, through the medium 
of the spine, excites the nerves in the limbs and sets them 
in motion. Accordingly, when our arms and legs feel 
tired, the true seat of this feeling is in the brain. This is 
why it is only in connection with those muscles which are 
set in motion consciously and voluntarily — in other words, 
depend for their action upon the brain — that any feeling 
of fatigue can arise ; this is not the case with those muscles 
which work involuntarily, like the heart. It is obvious, 
then, that injury is done to the brain if violent muscular 
exercise and intellectual exertion are forced upon it at the 
same moment, or at very short intervals. 

What I say stands in no contradiction wi f h the fact that 
at the beginning of a walk, or at any period of a short 
stroll, there often comes a feeling of enhanced intellectual 
vigor. The parts of the brain that come into play have 
had no time to become tired : and besides, slight muscular 
exercise conduces to activity of the respiratory organs, and 
causes a purer and more oxydated supply of arterial blood 
to mount to the brain. 

It is most important to allow the brain the full measure 
of sleep which is necessary to restore it; for sleep is "to a 
man's whole nature what winding up is to a clock.* 
This measure will vary directly with the development and 
activity of the brain ; to overstep the measure is mere 

* Cf. "Weltais Willeund Vorstellung/' 4th Edition. Bk, IL 
pp. 236-40, 



140 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

waste of time because if that is done, sleep gains only so 
much in length as it loses in depth.* 

It should be clearly understood that thought is nothing 
but the organic function of the brain ; and it has to obey 
the same laws in regard to exertion and repose as any other 
organic function. The brain can be ruined by overstrain, 
just like the eyes. As the function of the stomach is to 
digest, so it is that of the brain to think. The notion of a 
soul — as something elementary and immaterial, merely 
lodging in the brain and needing nothing at all for the 
performance of its essential function, which consists in 
always and unweariedly thinking — has undoubtedly driven 
many people to foolish practices, leading to a deadening of 
the intellectual pouters ; Frederick the Great, even, once 
tried to form the habit of doing without sleep altogether. 
It would be well if professors of philosophy refrained from 
giving currency to a notion which is attended by practical 
results of a pernicious character ; but then this is just 
what professorial philosophy does, in its old-womanish en- 
deavor to keep on good terms with the catechism. A man 
should accustom himself to view his intellectual capacities 
in no other light than that of physiological functions, and 
to manage them accordingly — nursing or exercising them 
as the case may be ; remembering that every kind of 
physical suffering, malady or disorder, in whatever part of 
the body it occurs, has its effect upon the mind. The 
best advice that 1 know on this subject is given by 
Cabanis in his Rapvorts du physique et du moral de 
Vhomme. \ 

Through neglect of this rule, many men of genius and 
and great scholars have become weak-minded and childish, 
©r even gone quite mad, as they grew old. To take no 

* Cf. loc : cit : p. 275. Sleep is a morsel of death borrowed 
to keep up and renew the part of life which is exhausted by the day 
— le sommeil est uti emprunt fait a la mart. Or it might be said 
that sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is 
called in at death ; and the higher the rate of interest and the more 
regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed. 

f Translator's Note. — The work to which Schopenhauer here 
refers is a series of essays by Cabanis, a French philosopher (1757- 
1808), treating of mental and moral phenomena on a physiological 
basis. In his later days, Cabanis completely abandoned his material- 
istic standpoint. 



OUR RELATION TO 0T&ER8. Hi 

other instances, there can be no doubt that the celebrated 
English poets of the early part of this century, Scott, 
Wordsworth, Sonthey, became intellectually dull and in- 
capable toward the end of their days, nay, soon after pass- 
ing their sixtieth year ; and that their imbecility can be 
traced to the fact that, at that period of life, they were all 
led on, by the promise of high pay, to treat literature as a 
trade and to write for money. This seduced them into an 
unnatural abuse of their intellectual powers ; and a man 
who puts his Pegasus into harness, and urges on his Muse 
with the whip, will have to pay a penalty similar to that 
which is exacted by the abuse of other kinds of power. 

And even in the case of Kant, I suspect that the second 
childhood of his last four years was due to overwork in 
later life, and after he had succeeded in becoming a famous 
man. 

Every month of the year has its own peculiar and direct 
influence upon health and bodily condition generally; nay, 
even upon the state of the mind. It is an influence 
dependent upon the weather. 



CHAPTER III. 

OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 

§ 21. In making Ins way through life, a man will find 
it useful to be ready and able to do two things ; to look 
ahead and to overlook ; the one will protect him from loss 
and injury, the other from disputes and squabbles. 

No one who has to live among men should absolutely 
discard any person who has his due place in the order of 
nature, even though lie is very wicked or contemptible or 
ridiculous. He must accept him as an unalterable fact — 
unalterable, because the necessary outcome of an eternal, 
fundamental principle ; and in bad cases he should re- 
member the words of Mephistopheles : esmass audi solche 
Kauze geben* — there must be fools and rogues in the world. 
If he acts otherwise, he will be committing an injustice, and 
giving a challenge of life and death to the man he dis- 
cards. No one can alter his own peculiar individuality, 

* Goethe's " Faust," Part I. 



142 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

his moral character, his intellectual capacity, his temper- 
ament or physique ; and if we go so far as to condemn a 
man from every point of view, there will be nothing left 
him but to engage us in deadly conflict; for we are practi- 
cally allowing him the right to exist only on condition 
that he becomes another man — which is impossible ; his 
nature forbids it. 

So if you have to live among men, you must allow every 
one the right to exist in accordance with the character he 
has, whatever it turns out to be : and all you should strive 
to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its 
kind and nature permit, rather than to hope for any alter- 
ation in it, or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This 
is the true sense of the maxim — "Live and let live." 
That, however, is a task which is difficult in proportion 
as it is right ; and he is a happy man who can once 
for all avoid having to do with a great many of his fellow 
creatures. 

The art of putting up with people may be learned by 
practicing patience on inanimate objects, which, in virtue 
of some mechanical or general physical necessity, oppose a 
stubborn resistance to our freedom of action — a form of 
patience which is required every day. The patience thus 
gained may be applied to our dealings with men, by accus- 
toming ourselves to regard their opposition, wherever we 
encounter it, as the inevitable outcome of their nature, 
which sets itself up against us in virtue of the same rigid law 
of necessity as governs the resistance of inanimate objects. 
To become indignant at their conduct is as foolish as to be 
angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And 
with many people the wisest thing you can do is to resolve 
to make use of those whom you cannot alter. 

§ 22. It is astonishing how easily and how quickly 
similarity, or difference of mind and disposition, makes 
itself felt between one man and another as soon as they 
begin to talk ; every little trifle shows it. When two 
people of totally different natures are conversing, almost 
everything said by the one will, in a greater or less degree, 
displease the other, and in many cases produce positive 
mnoyauce ; even though the conversation turn upon 
the most out-of-the way subject, or one in which neither 
of the parties has any real interest. People of similar 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 143 

nature, on the other hand, immediately come to feel a kind 
of general agreement ; and if they are cast very much in the 
of same mold, complete harmony or even unison will flow 
from their intercourse. 

This explains two circumstances. First of all, it shows 
why it is that common, ordinary people are so sociable and, 
find good company wherever they go. Ah ! those good, 
dear, brave people. It is just the contrary with those who 
are not of the common rim ; and the less they are so, the 
more unsociable they become ; so that if, in their isolation, 
they chance to come across some one in whose nature they 
can find even a single sympathetic chord, be it never so 
minute, they show extraordinary pleasure in his society. 
For one man can be to another only so much as the other 
is to him. Great minds are like eagles, and build their 
nest in some lofty solitude. 

Secondly, we are enabled to understand how it is that 
people of like disposition so quickly get on with one another, 
as though they were drawn together by magnetic force — 
kindred souls greeting each other from afar. Of course 
the most frequent opportunity of observing this is afforded 
by people of vulgar tastes and inferior intellect, but only 
because their name is legion ; while those who are better 
off in this respect and of a rarer nature, are not often to 
be met with : they are called rare because you can seldom 
find them. 

Take the case of a large number of people who have 
formed themselves into a league for the purpose of carry- 
ing out some practical object ; if there be two rascals 
among them, they will recognize each other as readily as if 
they bore a similar badge, and will at once conspire for 
some misfeasance or treachery. In the same way, if you 
can imagine— per impossible — a large company of very intel- 
ligent and clever people, among whom there are only two 
blockheads, these two will be sure to be drawn together by 
a feeling of sympathy, and each of them will very soon 
secretly rejoice at having found at least one intelligent 
person in the whole company. It is really quite curious 
to see how two such men, especially if they are morally 
and intellectually of an inferior type, will recognize each 
other at first sight ; with what zeal they will strive to be- 
come intimate ; how affably and cheerily they will run to 
greet each other, just as though they were old friends — \% 



144 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS 

is all so striking that one is tempted to embrace the Budd- 
hist doctrine of metempsychosis and presume that they 
were on familiar terms in some former state of existence. 

Still, in spite of all this general agreement, men are 
kept apart who might come together ; or, in some cases 
a passing discord springs up between them. This is due 
to diversity of mood. You will hardly ever see two peo- 
ple exactly in the same frame of mind ; for that is some- 
thing which varies with their condition of life, occupation, 
surroundings, health, the train of thought they are in at 
the moment, and so on. These differences give rise to 
discord between persons of the most harmonious disposi- 
tion. To correct the balance properly, so as to remove the 
disturbance — to introduce, as it were, a uniform tempera- 
ture — is a work demanding a very high degree of culture. 
The extent to which uniformity of mood is productive of 
good fellowship may be measured by its effects upon a 
large company. When, for instance, a great many people 
are gathered together and presented with some objective 
interest which works upon all alike and influences them in 
a similar way, no matter what it be — a common danger or 
hope, some great news, a spectacle, a play, a piece of 
music, or anything of that kind — you will find them 
roused to a mutual expression of thought, and a display of 
sincere interest. There will be a general feeling of pleas- 
ure among them ; for that which attracts their attention 
produces a unity of mood by overpowering all private and 
personal interests. 

And in default of some objective interest of the kind I 
have mentioned, recourse is usually had to something sub- 
jective. A bottle of wine is not an uncommon means of 
introducing a mutual feeling of fellowship ; and even tea 
and coffee are used for a like end. 

The discord which so easily finds its way into all society 
as an effect of the different moods in which people happen 
to be for the moment, also in part explains why it is that 
memory always idealizes, and sometimes almost transfig- 
ures, the attitude we have taken up at any period of the 
past — a change due to our inability to remember all the 
fleeting influences which disturbed us on any given occa- 
sion. Memory is in this respect like the lens of a camera 
ohscura : it contracts everything within its range, and so 
produces a much finer picture than the actual landscape 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 145 

affords. And, in the case of a man, absence always goes 
some way toward securing this advantageous light ; for 
though the idealizing tendency of the memory requires 
time to complete its work, it begins it at once. Hence 
it is a prudent thing to see your friends and acquaintances 
only at considerable intervals of time ; and on meeting 
them again, you will observe that memory has been at 
work. 

§ 23. No man can see "over his own height." Let me 
explain what I mean. 

You cannot see in another man any more than you have 
in yourself ; and your own intelligence strictly determines the 
extent to which he comes within its grasp. If your intel- 
ligence is of a very low order, mental qualities in another, 
even though they be of the highest kind, will have no 
effect at all upon you ; you will see nothing in their pos- 
sessor except the meanest side of his individuality — in 
other words, just those parts of his character and disposi- 
tion which are weak and defective. Your whole estimate 
of the man will be confined, to his defects, and his higher 
mental qualities will no more exist for you than colors 
exist for those who cannot see. 

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none. In any 
attempt to criticise another's work/ the range of knowl- 
edge possessed by the critic is as essential a part of his 
verdict as the claims of the work itself. 

Hence intercourse with others involves a process of level- 
ling down. The qualities which are present in one man, 
and absent in another, cannot come into play when they 
meet; and the self-sacrifice which this entails upon one of 
the parties, calls forth no recognition from the other. 

Consider how sordid, how stupid, in a word, how vulgar 
most men are, and you will see that it is impossible to talk 
to them without becoming vulgar yourself for the time be- 
ing. Vulgarity is in this respect like electricity; it is easily 
distributed. Yon will then fully appreciate the truth and 
propriety of the expression, "to make yourself cheap;" and 
vou will be glad to avoid the society of people whose only 
possible point of contact with you is just that part of your 
nature of which you have least reason to be proud. So you 
will see that, in dealing with fools and blockheads, there is 
onlv one way of showing your intelligence — by having noth- 



146 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

ting to do with them. That means, of course, that when 
you go into society, you may now and then feel like a good 
dancer who gets an invitation to a ball, and on arriving, 
finds that every one is lame — with whom is he to dance? 

§ 24. I feel respect for the man — and he is one in a hun- 
dred — who, when he is waiting or sitting unoccupied, re- 
frains from rattling or beating time with anything that hap- 
pens to be handy — his stick, or knife and fork, or whatever 
else it may be. The probability is that he is thinking of 
something. 

With a large number of people, it is quite evident that 
their power of sight completely dominates over their power 
of thought; they seem to be conscious of existence only 
when they are making a noise; unless indeed they happen 
to be smoking, for this serves a similar end. It is for the 
same reason that they never fail to be all eyes and ears for 
what is going on around them. 

§ 25. La Rochefoucauld makes the striking remark 
that it is difficult to feel deep veneration and great affection 
for one and the same person. If this is so, we shall have 
to choose whether it is veneration or love that we want from 
our fellow-men. 

Their love is always selfish, though in very different 
ways; and the means used to gain it are not always of a kind 
to make us proud. A man is loved by others mainly in the 
degree in which he moderates his claim on their good feel- 
ing and intelligence: but he must act genuinely in the mat- 
ter and without dissimulation — not merely out of forbear- 
ance, which is at bottom a kind of contempt. This calls 
to mind a very true observation of Helvetius:* "the amount 
of intellect necessary to please us, is a most accurate meas- 
ure of the amount of intellect we have ourselves." With 
these remarks as premises, it is easy to draw the conclu- 
sion. 

Now with veneration the case is just the opposite; it is 
wrung from men reluctantly, and for that very reason 

* Translator's Note. — Helvetius, Claude-Adrien (1715-71), a French 
philosophical writer much esteemed by Schopenhauer. His chief 
work "De 1' Esprit,' excited great interest and opposition at the time 
of its publication, on account of the author's pronounced materia> 
ism. 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 147, 

mostly concealed. Hence, as compared with love, venera- 
tion gives more real satisfaction; for it is connected with 
personal value, and the same is not directly true of love, 
which is subjective in its nature, while veneration is ob- 
jective. To be sure, it is more useful to be loved than to 
be venerated. 

§ 26. Most men are so thoroughly subjective that noth- 
ing really interests them but themselves. They always think 
of their own case as soon as ever any remark is made, and 
their whole attention is engrossed and absorbed by the 
merest chance reference to anything which affects them 
personally, be it ever so remote; with the result that they 
have no power left for forming an objective view of things 
should the conversation take that turn; neither can they 
admit any validity in arguments which tell against their 
interest or their vanity. Hence their attention is easily dis- 
tracted. They are so readily offended, insulted or annoyed, 
that in discussing any impersonal matter with them, no care 
is too great to avoid letting your remarks bear the slightest 
possible reference to the very worthy and sensitive individuals 
whom you have before you for anything you may say will per- 
haps hurt their feelings. People really care about nothing 
that does not affect them personally. True and striking obser- 
vations, fine, subtle and witty things are lost upon them; 
they cannot understand or feel them. But anything that 
disturbs their petty vanity in the most remote and indirect 
way, or reflects prejudicially upon their exceedingly precious 
selves — to that, they are most tenderly sensitive. In this 
respect they are like the little dog whose toes you are so apt? 
to tread upon inadvertently — you know it by the shrill 
bark it sets up ; or, again, they resemble a sick man covered 
with sores and boils, with whom the greatest care must be 
taken to avoid unnecessary handling. And in some people 
this feeling reaches such a pass that, if they are talking 
with any one, and he exhibits, or does not sufficiently con- 
ceal, his intelligence and discernment, they look upon it as 
a downright insult; altough for the moment they hide 
their ill will, and the unsuspecting author of it afterward 
ruminates in vain upon their conduct, and racks his brains 
to discover what in the world he could have done to excite 
their malice and hatred. 

But it is just as easy to flatter and win them over; and 



148 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

this is why their judgment is usually corrupt, and why their 
opinions are swayed, not by what is really true and right 
but by the favor of the party or class to which they belong. 
And the ultimate reason of it all is, that in such people 
force of will greatly predominates over knowledge; and 
hence their meager intellect is wholly given up to the serv- 
ice of the will, and can never free itself from that service 
for a moment. 

Astrology furnishes a magnificent proof of this miserable 
subjective tendency in men, which leads them to see every 
thing only as bearing upon themselves, and to think of 
nothing' that is not straightway made into a personal mat- 
ter. The aim of astrology is to bring the motions of the 
celestial bodies into relation with the wretched Ego and 
to establish a connection between a comet in the 6ky and 
squabbles and rascalities on earth. * 

§ 27. When any wrong statement is made, whether in 
public, or in society, or in books, and well received — or, at 
any rate, not refuted — that is no reason why you should 
despair or think that there the matter will rest. You 
should comfort yourself with the reflection that the ques- 
tion will be afterward gradually subjected to examination; 
light will be thrown upon it; it will be thought over, con- 
sidered, discussed, and generally in the end the correct 
view will be reached; so that, after a time — the length of 
which will depend upon the difficulty of the subject — every 
one will come to understand that which a clear head saw 
at once. 

In the meantime, of course, you must have patience. 
He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is 
like a man whose w r atch keeps good time, when all clocks 
in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows 
the right time; but what use is that to him? for every one 
goes by the clocks which speak false, not even excepting 
those who know that his watch is the only one that is 
right. 

§ 28. Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them, 
they become naughty. 

Therefore it is well not to be too indulgent or charitable 

* See for instance, Stobaeus, "Eclog." I. xii. 9. 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 149 

with any one. You may take it as a general rule that you 
will not lose a friend by refusing him a loan, but that you 
are very likely to do so by granting it; and, for similar 
reasons, you will not readily alienate people by being some- 
what proud and careless in your behavior; but if you are 
very kind and complaisant toward them, you will often 
make them arrogant and intolerable, and so a breach will 
ensue. 

There is one thing that, more than any other, throws 
people absolutely off their balance — the thought that you 
are dependent upon thern. This is sure to produce an in- 
solent and domineering manner toward you. There are 
some people, indeed, who become rude if you enter into 
any kind of relation with them; for instance, if you have 
occasion to converse with them frequently upon confiden- 
tial matters, they soon come to fancy that they can take 
liberties with you, and so they try to transgress the laws of 
politeness. This is why there are so few with whom you 
care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid 
familiarity with vulgar people. If a man comes to think 
that I am more dependent upon him than he is upon me, 
he at once feels as though I had stolen something from 
him; and his endeavor will be to have his vengeance and 
get it back. The only way to attain superiority in dealing 
with men, is to let it be seen that you are independent of 
them. 

And in this view it is advisable to let every one of your 
acquaintance— whether man or woman — feel now and then 
that you could very well dispense with their company. 
This will consolidate friendship. Nay, with most people 
there will be no harm in occasionally mixing a grain of 
disdain with your treatment of them; that will make them 
value your friendship all the more. Chi non istima vien 
stimato, as a subtle Italian proverb has it — to disregard is 
to win regard. But if we really think very highly of a 
person, we should conceal it from him like a crime. This 
is not a very gratifying thing to do, but it is right. Why, 
a dog will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a 
man! 

§ 29. It is often the case that people of noble character 
and great mental gifts betray a strange lack of w T orldly 
wisdom and a deficiency in the knowledge of men, more 



150 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

especially when they are young; with the result that it is 
easy to deceive or mislead them; and that, on the other 
hand, natures of the commoner sort are more ready and 
successful in making their way in the world. 

The reason of this is that, when a man has little or no 
experience, he must judge by his own antecedent notions; 
and in matters demanding judgment an antecedent notion 
is never on the same level as experience. For, with the 
commoner sort of people, an antecedent notion means just 
their own selfish point of view. This is not the case with 
those whose mind and character are above the ordinary; for 
it is precisely in this respect — their unselfishness-— that 
they differ from the rest of mankind; and as they judge 
other people's thoughts and actions by their own high 
standard, the result does not always tally with their calcu- 
lation. 

But if, in the end, a man of noble character comes to 
see, as the effect of his own experience, or by the lessons 
he learns from others, what it is that may be expected of 
men in general — namely, that five-sixths of them are 
morally and intellectually so constituted that, if circum- 
stances do not place you in relation with them, you had 
better get out of their way and keep as far as possible from 
having anything to do with them — still, he will scarcely 
ever attain an adequate notion of their wretchedly mean 
and shabby nature: all his life long he will have to be 
extending and adding to the inferior estimate he forms of 
them; and in the meantime he will commit a great many 
mistakes and do himself harm. 

Then again, after he has really taken to heart the lessons 
that have been taught him, it will occasionally happen that, 
when he is in the society of people whom he does not know, 
he will be surprised to find how thoroughly reasonable 
they all appear to be, both in their conversation and in 
their demeanor — in fact, quite honest, sincere, virtuous 
and trustworthy people, and at the same time shrewd and 
clever. 

But that ought not to perplex him. Nature is not like 
those bad poets, who, in setting a fool or a knave before 
us, do their work so clumsily, and with such evident de- 
sign, that you might almost fancy } T ou saw the poet stand- 
ing behind each of his characters, and continually disavow- 
ing their sentiments^ and telling vou in a tone of warning; 



OUR RE L A T10N TO URSEL VES. 1 5 1 

"This is a knave; that is a fool; do not mind what he 
says." But nature goes to work like Shakespeare and 
Goethe, poets who make every one of their characters — even 
if it is the devil himself! — appear to be quite in the right 
for the moment that they come before us in their several 
parts; the characters are described so objectively that they 
excite our interest and compel us to sympathize with their 
point of view; for, like the works of nature, everyone of 
these characters is evolved as the result of some hidden law 
or principle, which makes all they say and do appear 
natural and therefore necessary. And you will always be 
the prey or the plaything of the devils and fools in this 
world, if you expect to see them going about with horns or 
jangling their bells. 

And it should be borne in mind that, in their inter- 
course with others, people are like the moon or like 
hunchbacks; they show you only one of their sides. Every 
man has an innate talent for mimicry — for making a mask 
out of his physiognomy, so that he can always look as if he 
really were what he pretends to be; and since he makes his 
calculations always within the lines of his individual 
nature, the appearance he puts on suits him to a nicety, 
and its effect is extremely deceptive. He dons his mask 
whenever his object is to flatter himself into some one's 
good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to 
it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never forgetting 
that excellent Italian proverb: non e si tristo cane die non 
meni la coda — there is no dog so bad but that he will wag 
his tail. 

In any case it is well to take care not to form a highly 
favorable opinion of a person whose acquaintance you have 
only recently made, for otherwise you are very likely to be 
disappointed; and then you will be ashamed of yourself 
and perhaps even suffer some injury. And while I am on 
the subject, there is another fact that deserves mention. 
It is this. A man shows his character just in the way in 
which he deals with trifles — for then he is off his guard. 
This will often afford a good opportunity of observing the 
boundless egoism of a man's nature, and his total lack of 
consideration for others: and if these defects show them- 
selves in small things, or merely in his general demeanor 
you will find that they also underlie his action in matter* 
of importance, although he may disguise the fact. This is 



152 CO UNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

an opportunity which should not be missed. If in the 
little affairs of every day — the trifles of life, those matters 
to which the rule de minimis non applies — a mau is incon- 
siderate and seeks only what is advantageous or convenient 
to himself, to the prejudice of others' rights; if he appro- 
priates to himself that which belongs to all alike, you may 
be sure there is no justice in his heart, and that he would 
be a scoundrel on a wholesale scale, only that law and com- 
pulsion bind his hands. Do not trust him beyond your 
door. He who is not afraid to break the laws of his own 
private circle, will break those of the state when he can do 
so with impunity. 

If the average man were so constituted that the good in 
him outweighed the bad, it would be more advisable to 
rely upon his sense of justice, fairness, gratitude, fidelity, 
love or compassion, than to work upon his fears; but as 
the contrary is the case, and it is the bad that outweighs 
the good, the opposite course is the more prudent one. 

If any person with whom we are associated or have to 
do, exhibits unpleasant or annoying qualities, we have only 
to ask ourselves whether or not this person is of so much 
value to us that we can put up with frequent and repeated 
exhibitions of the same qualities in a somewhat aggravated 
form.* In case of an affirmative answer to this question, 
there will not be much to be said, because talking is very 
little use. We must let the matter pass, with or without 
some notice; but we should nevertheless remember that we 
are thereby exposing ourselves to a repetition of the offense. 
If the answer is in the negative, we must break with our 
worthy friend at once and forever; or in the case of a serv- 
ant, dismiss him. For he will inevitably repeat the 
offense, or do something tantamount to it, should the 
occasion return, even though for the moment he is deep 
and sincere in his assurances of the contrary. There is 
nothing, absolutely nothing, that a man cannot forget — 
but not himself, his own character. For character is in- 
corrigible; because all a man's actions emanate from an 
inward principle, in virtue of which he must always do the 
same thing under like circumstances; and he cannot do 
otherwise. Let me refer to my prize essay on the so-called 

* " To forgive and forget " means to throw away dearly bought ex 
perience. 



OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 153 

M Freedom of the Will/' the perusal of which will dissipate 
Any delusions the reader may have on this subject. 

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have 
broken, is a form of weakness ; and you pay the penalty of 
it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely 
the very thing which brought about the breach ; nay, he 
does it the more boldly, because he is secretly conscious 
that you cannot get on without him. This is also appli- 
cable to servants whom you have dismissed, and then taken 
into your service again. 

For the same reason, you should just as little expect 
people to continue to act in a similar way under altered 
circumstances. The truth is that men alter their demeanor 
and sentiments just as fast as their interest changes ; and 
their design in this respect is a bill drawn for such short 
payment that the man must be still more short-sighted who 
accepts the bill without protesting it. Accordingly, sup- 
pose you want to know how a man will behave in an office 
into which you think of putting him ; you should not 
build upon expectations, on his promises or assurances. 
For, even allowing that he is quite sincere, he is speaking 
about a matter of which he has no knowledge. The only 
way to calculate how he will behave, is to consider the cir- 
cumstances in which he will be placed, and the extent to 
which they will conflict with his character. 

If you wish to get a clear and profound insight — and it 
is very needful — into the true but melancholy elements of 
which most men are made, you will find it a very instructive 
thing to take the way they behave in the pages of liter- 
ature as a commentary to their doings in practical life, and 
vice versa. The experience thus gained will be very useful 
in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about 
others. But if you come across any special trait of mean- 
ness or stupidity — in life or in literature — you must be 
careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon 
it merely as an addition to your knowledge — a new fact to 
be considered in studying the character of humanity. 
Your attitude toward it will be that of the mineralogist 
who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a 
mineral. 

Of course there are some facts which are very exceptional, 
and it is difficult to understand how they arise, and how it 
is that there come to be such enormous differences between 



154 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

man and man ; but, in general, what was said long ago is 
quite true, and the world is in a very bad way. In savage 
countries they eat one another, in civilized countries they 
deceive one another ; and that is what people call the way 
of the world! What are states and all the elaborate systems 
of political machinery, and the rule of force, whether in 
home or in foreign affairs — what are they but barriers 
against the boundless iniquity of mankind ? Does not all 
history show that whenever a king is firmly planted on the 
throne, and his people reach some degree of prosperity, he 
uses it to lead his army, like a band of robbers, against ad- 
joining countries ? Are not almost all wars ultimately 
undertaken ion* purposes of plunder ? In the most remote 
antiquity, and to some extent also in the Middle Age, the 
conquered became slaves — in other words, they had to 
work for those who conquered them ; and where is the dif- 
ference between that and paying war- taxes, which represent 
the product of previous work ? 

All war, says Voltaire, is a matter of robbery ; and the 
Germans should take that as a warning. 

§ 30. No man is so formed that he can be left entirely 
to himself, to go his own ways; every one needs to be guided 
by a preconceived plan, and to follow certain general rules. 
But if this is carried too far, and a man tries to take on a 
character which is not natural or innate in him, but is 
artificially acquired and evolved merely by a process of 
reasoning, he will very soon discover that Nature cannot 
be forced, and that if you drive it out, it will return despite 
your efforts : 

"Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." 

To understand a rule governing conduct toward others, 
even to discover it for one's self and to express it neatly, is 
easy enough ; and still, very soon afterward, the rule may 
be broken in practice. But that is no reason for despair ; 
and you need not fancy that as it is impossible to regulate 
your life in accordance with abstract ideas and maxims, it 
is better to live just as you please. Here, as in all theo- 
retical instruction that aims at a practical result, the first, 
thing to do is to understand the rule ; the second thing is 
to learn the practice of it. The theory may be understood 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 155 

at once by an effort of reason, and yet the practice of it 
acquired only in course of time. 

A pupil may learn the various notes on an instrument of 
music, or the different positions in fencing ; and wheu he 
makes a mistake, as he is sure to do, however hard he tries, 
he is apt to think it will be impossible to observe the rules, 
when he is set to read music at sight or challenged to a 
furious duel. But for all that, gradual practice makes him 
perfect, through a long series of slips, blunders and fresh 
efforts. It is just the same in other things ; in learning to 
write and speak Latin, a man will forget the grammatical 
rules; it is only by long practice that a blockhead turns into a 
courtier, that a passionate man becomes shrewd and worldly- 
wise, or a frank person reserved, or a noble person ironical. 
But though self-discipline of this kind is the result of long 
habit, it always works by a sort of external compulsion, 
which Nature never ceases to resist and sometimes unexpect- 
edly overcomes. The difference- between action in accord- 
ance with abstract principles, and action as the result of 
original innate tendency, is the same as that between a 
work of art, say a watch — where form and movement are 
impressed upon shapeless and inert matter — and a living 
organism, where form and matter are one, and each is 
inseparable from the other. 

There is a maxim attributed to the Emperor -Napoleon, 
which expresses this relation between acquired and innate 
character, and confirms what I have said: "everything that 
is unnatural is imperfect " — a rule of universal application, 
whether in the physical or in the moral sphere. The only 
exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine,* a sub- 
stance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state 
cannot compare with the artificial preparation of it. 

And in this connection let me utter a word of protest 
against any and every form of affectation. It always arouses 
contempt ; in the first place, because it argues deception, 
and the deception is cowardly, for it is based on fear; and, 
secondly, it argues self-condemnation, because it means 
that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and there- 
fore something which he thinks better than he actually is. 

* Translator' $ Note— Aventurine is a rare kind of quartz ; and the 
r.ame name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling it, 
which is manufactured at Murano. It is so called from the fact that 
the glass was discovered bv cbance (avventura). 



156 COUNSFjLS AND MAXIMS. 

To affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is jugt 
to confess that you have not got it. Whether it is courage, 
or learning, or intellect, or wit, or success with women, or 
riches, or social position, or whatever else it may be that 
a man boasts of, you may conclude by his boasting about 
it that that is precisely the direction in which he is rather 
weak ; for if a man possesses any faculty to the full, it will 
not occur to him to make a great show of affecting it ; 
he is quite content to know that he has it. That is the 
application of the Spanish proverb: herradura quechacolo- 
tea davo le falta — a clattering hoof means a nail gone. 
To be sure, as I said at first, no man ought to let the reins 
go quite loose, and show himself just as he is; for there are 
many evil and bestial sides to our nature which require to 
be hidden away out of sight ; and this justifies the negative 
attitude of dissimulation, but it does not justify a positive 
feigning of qualities which are not there. It should also 
be remembered that affectation is recognized at once, even 
before it is clear what it is that is being affected. And, 
finally, affectation cannot last very long and one day the 
mask will fall off. Nemo potest personam cliu ferre fidam, 
says Seneca;* fida cito in naturam suam recidunt — no one 
can persevere long in a fictitious character ; for nature will 
soon re-assert itself. 

§ 31. A man bears the weight of his own body without 
knowing it, but he soon feels the weight of any other, if 
he tries to move it: in the same way, a man can see other 
people's shortcomings and vices, but he is blind to his own. 
This arrangement has one advantage: it turns other people 
into a kind of mirror, in which a man can see clearly every- 
thing that is vicious, faulty, ill-bred and loathsome in his 
own nature ; only, it is generally the old story of the dog 
barking at its own image; it is himself that he sees and not 
another dog, as he fancies. 

He who criticises others, works at the reformation of 
himself. Those who form the secret habit of scrutinizing 
other people's general behavior, and passing severe judg- 
ment upon what they do and leave undone, thereby improve 
themselves, and work out their own perfection : for they 
will have sufficient sense of justice, or at any ra'te enough 

* "De Clementia." I. 1. 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 157 

pride ana vanity, to avoid in their own case that which they 
condemn so harshly elsewhere. But tolerant people are 
just the opposite, and claim for themselves the same indul- 
gence that they extend to others — hanc veniam damns 
petimusqne vicissim. It is all very well for the Bible to 
talk about the mote in another's eye and the beam in one's 
own. The nature of the eye is to look not at itself but at 
other things; and therefore to observe and blame faults in 
another is a very suitable way of becoming conscious of 
one's own. We require a looking-glass for the due dressing 
of our morals. 

The same rule applies in the case of style and fine writ- 
ing. If, instead of condemning, you applaud some new 
folly in these matters, you will imitate it. That is just 
why literary follies have such vogue in Germany. The 
Germans are a very tolerant people — everybody can see 
that! Their maxim is — Hanc veniam damns petimusque 
vicissim. 

§ 32. When he is young, a man of noble character fan- 
cies that the relations prevailing among mankind, and the 
alliances to which these relations lead, are, at bottom and 
essentially, ideal in their nature ; that is to say, that 
they rest upon similarity of disposition or sentiment, or 
taste, or intellectual power, and so on. 

But, later on, he finds out that it is a real foundation 
which underlies these alliances ; that they are based upon 
some material interest. This is the true foundation of 
almost all alliances: nay, most men have no notion of an 
alliance resting upon any other basis. Accordingly, we 
find that a man is always measured by the office he holds, 
or by his occupation, nationality, or family relations — in a 
word, by the position and character which have been 
assigned him in the conventional arrangements of life, 
where he is ticketed and treated as so much goods. Reference 
to what he is in himself, as a man — to the measure of his 
own personal qualities-is never made unless for convenience 
sake: and so that view of a man is something exceptional, 
to be set aside and ignored, the moment that any one finds 
it disagreeable; and this is what usually happens. But the 
more of personal worth a man has, the less pleasure he will 
take in these conventional arrangements ; and he will try 
to withdraw from the sphere in which they apply. The 



158 COUNSELS AlSl> MAXIMS. 

reason why these arrangements exist at all, is simply that 
in this world of ours misery and need are the chief fea- 
tures: therefore it is everywhere the essential and para- 
mount business of life to devise the means of alleviating 
them. 

§ 33. As paper-money circulates in the world instead of 
real coin, so, in the place of true esteem and genuine 
friendship, you have the outward appearance of it— a 
mimic show made to look as much like the real thing as 
possible. 

On the other hand, it may be asked whether there are 
any people who really deserve the true coin. For my own 
part, I should certainly pay more respect to an honest dog 
wagging his tail than to a hundred such demonstrations of 
human regard. 

True and genuine friendship presupposes a strong sym- 
pathy with the weal and woe of another — purely objective 
in its character and quite disinterested; and this in its turn 
means an absolute identification of self with the object of 
friendship. The egoism of human nature is so strongly 
antagonistic to any such sympathy, that true friendship 
belongs to that class of things — the sea-serpent, for instance 
— with regard to which no one knows whether they are fabu- 
lous or really exist somewhere or other. 

Still, in many cases, there is a grain of true and genuine 
friendship in the relations of man to man, though gener- 
ally, of course, some secret personal interest is at the 
bottom of them — some one among the many forms that 
selfishness can take. But in a world where all is imperfect, 
this grain of true feeling is such an ennobling influence 
that it gives some warrant for calling those relations by the 
name of friendship, for they stand far above the ordinary 
friendships that prevail among mankind. The latter are 
so constituted that, were you to hear how your dear friends 
speak of you behind your back, you would nevier say 
another word to them. 

Apart from the case where it would be a real help to you 
if your friend were to make some considerable sacrifice to 
serve you, there is no better means of testing the genuine- 
ness of his feeling than the way in which he receives the 
news of a misfortune that has just happened to you. At 
that moment the expression of his features will either show 



OUR RELAlION TO OTHERS. 158 

that his one thought is that of true and sincere sympathy 
for you; or else the absolute composure of his countenance, 
or the passing trace of something other than sympathy, 
will confirm the well-known maxim of La Rochefoucauld: 
Dans Vadversite cle nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons 
toujonvs quelque chose qui ne nous deplait pas. Indeed,, 
at such a moment, the ordinary so-called friend will find it 
hard to suppress the signs of a slight smile of pleasure. 
There are few ways by which you can make more certain 
of putting people into a good humor than by telling them 
of some trouble that has recently befallen you, or by unre- 
servedly disclosing some personal weakness of yours. How 
characteristic this is of humanity! 

Distance and long absence are always prejudicial to 
friendship, however, disinclined a man may be to admit it. 
Our regard for people whom we do not see — even though 
they be our dearest friends — gradually dries up in the 
course of years, and they become abstract notions; so that 
our interest in them grows to be more and more intel- 
lectual — nay, it is kept up only as a kind of tradition; 
while we retain a lively and deep interest in those who are 
constantly before our eyes, even if they be only pet 
animals. This shows how much men are limited by their 
senses, and how true is the remark that Goethe makes in 
"Tasso" about the dominant influence of the present 
moment: 

*' Die Gegenwart ist eiue maclitige Gottin." * 

"Friends of the house" are very rightly so called; because 
they are friends of the house rather than of its master; in 
other words, they are more like cats than dogs. 

Your friends will tell you that they are sincere ; your 
enemies are really so. Let your enemies' censure be like a 
bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge. 

A friend in need, as the saying goes, is rare. Nay, it is 
just the contrary; no sooner have you made a friend than 
he is in need, and asks you for a loan. 

§ 84. A man must be still a greenhorn in the ways of the 
world, if he imagines that he can make himself popular in 

* Act iv. . sc. 4. 



160 CO UNSELS A ND MAXIMS. 

society by exhibiting intelligence and discernment. With 
the immense majority of people, such qualities excite hatred 
and resentment, which are rendered all the harder to bear 
by the fact that people are obliged to suppress — even from 
themselves — the real reason of their anger. 

What actually takes place is this. A man feels and per 
ceives that the person with whom he is conversing is intel- 
lectually very much his superior. He thereupon secretly 
and half-unconsciously concludes that his interlocutor must 
form a proportionately iow and limited estimate of his 
abilities. That is a method of reasoning — an enthymeme — 
which rouses the bitterest reelings of sullen and rancorous 
hatred.* And so Gracian is quite right in saying that the 
only way to win affection from jDeojDle is to show the most 
animal-like simplicity of demeanor — para ser hi en quisto, 
el unico medio vestirse la piel del mas simple de los bmtos.\ 

To show your intelligence and discernment is only an 
indirect way of reproaching other people for being dull and 
incapable. And besides, it is natural for a vulgar man to 
be violently agitated by the sight of opposition in any form 
and in this case envy comes in as the secret cause of his 
hostility. For it is a matter of daily observation that 
people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies 
their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without com- 
parison with others. Now, there is nothing of which a 
man is prouder than of intellectual ability, for it is this 
that gives him his commanding place in the animal world. 
It is an exceedingly rash thing to let any one see that you 
are decidedly superior to him in this respect, and to let 

* Of. "Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," Bk. II. p. 256 (4th 
Edit.), where I quote from Dr. Johnson, and from Merck, the friend 
of Goethe's youth. The former says: "There is nothing by which a 
man exasperates most people more, than by displaying a superior 
ability of brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, 
but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts." (BoswelPs 
" Life of Johnson," aetat: 74.) 

f Translator 's Note. — Balthazar Gracian " Oraculo manuel,y arte 
de prudencia," 240. Gracian (1584-1658) was a Spanish prose writer 
and Jesuit, whose works deal chiefly with the observation of charac- 
ter in the various phenomena of life. Schopenhauer, among others, 
had a great admiration for his worldly philosophy, and translated his 
" Oraculo manuel " — a system of rules for the conduct of life — into 
German. The same book was translated into English toward the 
close of the seventeeth century. 



OUR RELAZ T ON TO OTHERS. 161 

other people see it too; because he will then thirst for venge- 
ance, and generally look about for an opportunity of 
taking it by means of insult, because this is to pass from 
the sphere of intellect to that of will — and there all are on 
an equal footing as regards the feeling of hostility. Hence, 
while rank and riches may always reckon upon deferential 
treatment in society, that is something which intellectual 
ability can never expect; to be ignored is the greatest favor 
shown to it; and if people notice it at all, it is because they 
regard it as a piece of impertinence, or else as something 
to which its possessor has no legitimate right, and upon 
which he dares to pride himself; and in retaliation and 
revenge for his conduct, people secretly try and humiliate 
him in some other way; and if they wait to do this, it is 
only for a fitting opportunity. A man may be as humble 
as possible in his demeanor, and yet hardly ever get people 
to overlook his crime in standing intellectually above 
them. In the " Garden of Roses," Sadi makes the remark : 
"You should know that foolish people are a hundredfold 
more averse to meeting the wise than the wise are indis- 
posed for the company of the foolish." 

On the other hand, it is a real recommendation to be 
stupid. For just as warmth is agreeable to the body, so it 
does the mind good to feel its superiority ; and a man will 
seek company likely to give him this feeling, as instinc 
tively as he will approach the fireplace or walk in the sun 
if he wants to get warm. But this means that he will be 
disliked on account of his superiority ; and if a man is to 
be liked, he must really be inferior in point of intellect ; 
and the same thing holds good of a woman in point of 
beauty. To give proof of real and unfeigned inferiority to 
some of the people you meet — that is a very difficult busi- 
ness indeed ! 

Consider how kindly and heartily a girl who is passably 
pretty will welcome one who is downright ugly. Physical 
advantages are not thought so much of in the case of man, 
thpugh I suppose you would rather a little man sat next to 
you than one who was bigger than yourself. This is why, 
among men, it is the dull and ignorant, and among women 
the ugly, who are always popular and in request. It is 
likely to be said of such people that they are extremely 
good-natured, because everyone wants to find a pretext for 
caring about them — a pretext which will blind both himself 



1 62 CO UNSELS A NI> MAXIMS. 

and other people to the real reason why he likes them. 
This is also why mental superiority of any sort always tends 
to isolate its possessor : people run away from him out of 
pure hatred, and say all manner of bad things about him 
by way of justifying their action.* Beauty, in the case of 
women, has a similar effect : very pretty girls have no 
friends of their own sex, and they even find it hard to get 
another girl to keep them company. A handsome woman 
should always avoid applying for a position as companion, 
because the moment she enters the room, her prospective 
mistress will scowl at her beauty, as a piece of folly with 
which, both for her own and for her daughters' sake, she 
can very well dispense. But if the girl has advantages of 
rank, the case is very different ; because rank, unlike per- 
sonal qualities which work by the force of mere contrast, 
produces its effect by a process of reflection ; much in the 
same way as the particular hue of a person's complexion 
depends upon the prevailing tone of his immediate sur- 
roundings. 

§ 35. Our trust in other people often consists in great 
measure of pure laziness, selfishness and vanity on our own 
part : I say laziness, because, instead of making inquiries 
ourselves, and exercising an active care we prefer to trust 
others ; selfishness, because we are led to confide in people 
by the pressure of our own affairs ; and vanity, when we 
ask confidence for a matter on which we rather pride our- 
selves. And yet, for all that, we expect people to be true 
to the trust we repose in them. 

But we ought not to become angry if people put no 

* If you desire to get on in the world, friends and acquaintances are 
oy far the best passport to fortune. The possession of a great deal 
of ability makes a man proud, and therefore not apt to flatter those 
who have very little, and from whom, on that account, the possession 
of great ability should be carefully concealed. The consciousness of 
small intellectual power has just tbe opposite effect, and is very com- 
patible with a humble, affable and companionable nature, and with 
respect for what is mean and wretched. This is why an inferior sort 
of man has so many people to befriend and encourage him. 

These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political 
jife, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay, even 
for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In learned 
societies, for example, mediocrity — that very acceptable quality — is 
always to the fore, while merit meets with tardy recognition, or 
with none at all. So it is in everything. 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 163 

trust in us : because that realty means that they pay honesty 
the sincere compliment of regarding it as a very rare thing, 
so rare, indeed, as to leave us in doubt whether its exist- 
ence is not merely fabulous. 

§ 36. Politeness, which the Chinese hold to be a cardinal 
virtue, is based upon two considerations of policy. I have 
explained one of these consideiations in my " Ethics" * ; the 
other is as follows : Politeness is a tacit agreement that 
people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, 
shall on either side be ignored and not made the subject of 
reproach ; and since these defects are thus rendered some 
what less obtrusive, the result is mutually advantageous. 

It is a wise thing to be polite ; consequently, it is a stupid 
r ,hing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and 
willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your 
house on fire. For politeness is like a counter — an avowedly 
false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy. A sensible 
man will be generous in the use of it. It is customary in 
every country to end a letter with the words : i( your most 
obedient servant" — voire tres-humble serviteur — suo devo- 
tissimo servo. (The Germans are the only people who sup- 
press the word servant — diener — because, of course, it is 
not true !) However, to carry politeness to such an extent 
as to damage your prospects, is like giving money where 
only counters are expected. 

Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be 
made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it 
will take any shape you please. In the same way, by 
being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and 
obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and 
malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what 
warmth is to wax. 

Of course, it is no easy matter to be polite ; in so far, I 
mean, as it requires us to show great respect for everybody, 

* Translator's Note. — In tlie passage referred to (" Grundlage der 
Moral," collected works, Vol. IV. pp. 187 and 198), Schopenhauer 
explains politeness as a conventional and systematic attempt to mask 
the egoism of human nature in the small affairs of life — an 
egoism so repulsive that some such device is necessary for the 
purpose of concealing its ugliness. The relation which politeness 
bears to the true love of one's neighbor is analogous to that existing 
between justice as an affair of legality, and justice as the real integrity 
of the heart. 



164 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

whereas most people deserve none at all ; and again in so 
far as it demands that we should feign the most lively 
interest in people, when we must be very glad that we 
have nothing to do with them. To combine politeness 
with pride is a masterpiece of wisdom. 

We should be much less ready to lose our temper over 
an insult — which, in the strict sense of the word, means 
that we have not been treated with respect— if, on the 
one hand, we had not such an exaggerated estimate of our 
value and dignity — that is to say, if we were not so im- 
mensely proud of ourselves ; and, on the other hand, if we 
had arrived at any clear notion of the judgment which, in 
his heart, one man generally passes upon another. If 
most people resent the slightest hint that any blame 
attaches to them, you may imagine their feelings if they 
were to overhear what their acquaintances say about them„ 
You should never lose sight of the fact that ordinary 
politeness is only a grinning mask : if it shifts its place a 
little, or is removed for a moment, there is no use raising a 
hue and cry. When a man is downright rude, it is as 
though he had taken off all his clothes, and stood before 
you in puris naturalibus. Like most men in this condi- 
tion, he does not present a very attractive appearance. 

§ 37. You ought never to take any man as a model for 
what you should do or leave undone ; because position and 
circumstances are in no two cases alike, and difference of 
character gives a peculiar, individual tone to what a man 
does. Hence duo cum faciant idem, non est idem — two 
persons may do the same thing with a different result. A 
man should act in accordance with his own character, as 
soon as he has carefully deliberated on what he is about 
to do. 

The outcome of this is that originality cannot be dis- 
pensed with in practical matters : otherwise, what a man 
does will not accord with what he is. 

§ 38. Never combat any man's opinion ; for though 
you reached the age of Methuselah, you would never have 
done setting him right upon all the absurd things that 
he believes. 

It is also well to avoid correcting people's mistakes in 
conversation, however good your intentions may be ; for it 



OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 165 

is easy to offend people, and difficult, if not impossible, to 
mend them. 

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people 
whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should 
imagine that you are listening to the dialogue of two fools 
in a comedy. Prdbatum est. 

The man who comes into the world with the notion that 
he is really going to instruct it in matters of the highest 
importance, may thank his stars if he escapes with a whole 
skin. 

§ 39. If you want your judgment to be accepted, ex- 
press it coolly and without passion. All violence has its 
seat in the will ; and so, if your judgment is expressed 
with vehemence, people will consider it an effort of will, 
and not the outcome of knowledge, which is in its nature 
cold and unimpassioned. Since the will is the primary 
and radical element in human nature, and intellect merely 
supervenes as something secondary, people are more likely 
to believe that the opinion you express with so much vehe- 
mence is due to the excited state of your will, rather than 
that the excitement of the will comes only from the ardent 
nature of your opinion. 

§ 40. Even when you are fully justified in praising 
yourself, you should never be seduced into doing so. For 
vanity is so very common, and merit so very uncommon, 
that even if a man appears to be praising himself, though 
very indirectly, people will be ready to lay a hundred to 
one that he is talking out of pure vanity, and that 
he has not sense enough to see what a fool he is making of 
himself. 

Still, for all that, there may be some truth in Bacon's 
remark that, as in the case of calumny, if you throw 
enough dirt, some of it will stick, so it is also in regard to 
self-praise ; with the conclusion that self-praise, in small 
doses, is to be recommended.* 



* Translator s Note. — Schopenhauer alludes to the following pas- 
i Bacon's " De Augmentis Scientarium," Bk. viii., ch, 2: 
Sicitt enim did solet de calumnia, audacter caluraniare, semper aliquid 
haeret : sic did potest de jacantia {nisi plane deformis fuerit et ridi- 
cula), audacter te vendita, semper aliquid haeret. Haerebeit certe 
apud populum licet prudentiores subrideant. Itaque existimatio parta 
apud plurimos pauQorum fastidium abunde cornpensabit. 



166 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

§ 41. If you have reason to suspect that a person ia 
telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word 
he said. This will give him courage to go on ; he will 
become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end 
betray himself. 

Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal 
something from you, but with only partial success, look as 
though you did not believe him. This opposition on your 
part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of 
truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your 
incredulity. 

§ 42. You should regard all your private affairs as 
secrets, and, in respect of them, treat your acquaintances, 
even though you are on good terms with then), as perfect 
strangers, letting them know nothing more than they can 
see for themselves. For in course of time, and under 
altered circumstances, you may find it a disadvantage 
that they know even the most harmless things about 
you. 

And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show 
your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking 
out; for silence is a matter of prudence, while speech has 
something in it of vanity. The opportunities for displaying 
the one or the other quality occur equally often; but the 
fleeting satisfaction afforded by speech is often preferred to 
the permanent advantage secured by silence. 

The feeling of relief which lively people experience in 
speaking aloud when no one is listening, should not be in- 
dulged, lest it grow into a habit; for in this way thought 
establishes such very friendly terms with speech, that con- 
versation is apt to become a process of thinking aloud. 
Prudence exacts that a wide gulf should be fixed between 
what we think and what we say. 

At times we fancy that people are utterly unable to be- 
lieve in the truth of some statement affecting us personally, 
whereas it never occurs to them to doubt it, but if we give 
them the slightest opportunity of doubting it, they find it 
absolutely impossible to believe it any more. We often be 
tray ourselves into revealing something, simply because we 
suppose that people cannot help noticing it — justasa man 
will throw himself down f rora a great height because he loses 
his head, in other words, because he fancies that he cannot 



OUR UELATION TO OTHEHS. 16? 

retain a firm footing any longer; the torment of his posi- 
tion is so great, that he thinks it better to put an end to 
it at once. This is the kind of insanity which is called 
acrophobia. 

But it should not be forgotten how clever people are in 
regard to affairs which do not concern them, even though 
they show no particular sign of acuteness in other matters. 
This is a kind of algebra in which people are very pro- 
ficient: give them a single fact to go upon, and they will 
solve the most complicated problems. So, if you wish to 
relate some event that happened long ago, without men- 
tioning any names, or otherwise indicating the persons to 
whom you refer, you should be very careful not to introduce 
into your narrative anything that might point, however 
distantly, to some definite fact, whether it is a particular 
locality or a date, or the name of some one who was only to 
a small extent implicated, or anything else that was even 
remotely connected with the event; for that at once gives 
people something positive to go upon, and by the aid of 
their talent for this sort of algebra, they will discover all 
the rest. Their curiosity in these matters becomes a kind 
of enthusiasm; their will spurs on their intellect, and drives 
it forward to the attainment of the most remote results. 
For however unsusceptible and indifferent people may be 
to general and universal truths, they are very ardent in the 
matter of particular details. 

In keeping with what I have said, it will be found that 
all those who profess to give instruction in the wisdom of 
life are specially urgent in commending the practice of 
silence, and assign manifold reasons why it should be ob 
served; so it is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the 
subject any further. However, I may just add one or two 
little known Arabian proverbs, which occur to me as pecul- 
iarly appropriate: 

' 'Do not tell a friend anything that you would conceal 
from an enemy." 

"A secret is in my custody, if I keep it; but should it 
escape me, it is I who am the prisoner." 

" The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace." 

§ 43. Money is never spent to so much advantage as 
when you have been cheated out of it; for at one stroke you 
ha7e purchased prudence. 



168 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

§ 44. If possible, no animosity should be felt for any 
one. But carefully observe and remember the manner in 
which a man conducts himself, so that you may take the 
measure of his value — at any rate in regard to yourself — 
and regulate your bearing toward him accordingly; never 
losing signt of the fact that character is unalterable, and 
that to forget the bad features in a man's disposition is like 
throwiag away hard-won money. Thus you will protect 
yourself against the results of unwise intimacy and foolish 
friendship. 

" Give way neither to love nor to hate," is one half of 
worldly wisdom: "say nothing and believe nothing," the 
other half. Truly, a world where there is need of such 
rules as this and the following, is one upon which a mao 
may well turn his back. 

§ 45. To speak angrily to a person, to show your hatred 
by what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary 
proceeding — dangerous, foolish, ridiculous, and vulgar. 

Anger or hatred should never be shown otherwise than 
in what you do; and feelings will be all the more effective 
in action, in so far as you avoid the exhibition of them in 
any other way. It is only cold blooded animals whose bite 
is poisonous. 

§ 46. To speak without emphasizing your words — par- 
lev sans accent — is an old rule with those who are wise iu 
the world's ways. It means that you should leave other 
people to discover what it is that you have said; and as 
their minds are slow, you can make your escape in time. On 
the other hand, to emphasize your meaning — parler avw 
accent — is to address their feelings; and the result is always 
the opposite of what you expect. If you are only polite 
enough in your manner and courteous in your tone ther& 
are many people whom you may abuse outright, and yet 
run no immediate risk of offending them. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WORLDLY FORTUNE. 



§ 47. However varied the forms that human destiny 
may take, the same elements are always present; and so 



WOMLDLT FORTUNE. 169 

life is everywhere much of a piece, whether it is passed in 
the cottage or in the palace, in the barrack or in the cloister. 
Alter the circumstances as much as you please! point to 
strange adventures, successes, failures! life is like a sweet- 
shop, where there is a great variety of things, odd in shape 
and diverse in color — one and all made from the same paste. 
And when men speak of some one's success, the lot of the 
man who has failed is not so very different as it seems. The 
inequalities in the world are like the combinations in a 
kaleidoscope; at every turn a fresh picture strikes the eye; 
and yet, in reality, you see only the same bits of glass as 
you saw before. 

§ 48. An ancient writer says, very truly, that there are 
three great powers in the world: Sagacity, Strength, and 
Luck — dvvedis, npctToS, rvxv- I think the last is the most 
efficacious. 

A man's life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck — 
secunda aut adversa fortuna — acts the part of the wind, 
and speeds the vessel on its way or drives it far out of its 
course. All that the man can do for himself is of little 
avail; like the rudder, which, if worked hard and continu- 
ously, may help in the navigation of the ship; and yet all 
may be lost again by a sudden squall. But if the wind is 
only in the right quarter, the ship will sail on so as not to 
need any steering. The power of luck is nowhere better ex- 
pressed than in a certain Spanish proverb: Daventura a tu 
Mjo,y echa lo en el mar — give your son luck and throw him 
into the sea. 

Still, chance, it may be said, is a malignant power, and 
as little as possible should be left to its agency. And yet 
where is there any giver who, in dispensing gifts, tells us 
quite clearly that we have no right to them, and that we 
owe them not to any merit on our part but wholly to the 
goodness and grace of the giver — at the same time allow- 
ing us to cherish the joyful hope of receiving in all humility, 
further undeserved gifts from the same hands — where 
is there any giver like that, unless it be Chance? who 
understands the kingly art of showing the recipient that 
all merit is powerless and unavailing against the royal 
grace and favor. 

On looking back over the course of his life — that laby- 
rinthine way of error — a man must see many points where 



170 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

luck failed him and misfortune came; and then it is easy to 
carry self-reproach to an unjust excess. For the course of 
a man's life is in no wise entirely of his own making: it is 
the product of two factors — the series of tilings that hap- 
pened and his own resolves in regard to them, and these 
two are constantly interacting upon and modifying each 
other. And besides these, another influence is at work in 
the very limited extent of a man's horizon, whether it is 
that he cannot see very far ahead in respect of the plans he 
will adopt, or that he is still less able to predict the course 
of future events: his knowledge is strictly confined to pres- 
ent plans and present events. Hence, as long as a man's 
goal is far off, he cannot steer straight for it; he must be 
content to make a course that is approximately right; 
and in following the direction in which he thinks he ought 
to go, he will often have occasion to tack. 

All that a man can do is to form such resolves as from 
time to time accord with the circumstances in which he is 
placed, in the hope of thus managing to advance a step 
nearer toward the final goal. It is usually the case that 
the position in which we stand, and the object at which we 
aim, resemble two tendencies working with dissimilar 
strength in different directions ; and the course of our life 
is represented by their diagonal, or resultant force. 

Terence makes the remark that life is like a game at 
dice, where if the number that turns up is not precisely the 
one you want, you can still contrive to use it equally well : 
— in vita est hominum quasi cum luclas tesseris ; si illud 
quod maxime opus est jactu non cadit, illud quod cecidit 
forte, id arte tit corrigas* Or, to put the matter 
more shortly, life is like a game of cards, when the cards 
are shuffled and dealt by fate. But for my present pur- 
pose, the most suitable simile would be that of a game 
of chess, where the plan we determined to follow is 
conditioned by the play of our rival — in life, by the 
caprice of fate. We are compelled to modify our tactics, 
often to such an extent that, as we carry them out, hardly 
a single feature of the original plan can be recognized. 

But above and beyond all this, there is another influence 
that makes itself felt in our lives. It is a trite saying 

* He seems to have been referring to a game something like 
Wkgammon. 



WORLDL F FORTUNE. 171 

—only too frequently true — that we are often more 
foolish than we think. On the other hand, we are often 
wiser than we fancy ourselves to be. This, however, is a 
discovery which only those can make, of whom it is really 
true ; and it takes them along time to make it. Our brains 
are not the wisest part of us. In the great moments of 
life, when a man decides upon an important step, his action 
is directed not so much by any clear knowledge of the right 
thing to do, as by an inner impulse — you may almost call 
it an instinct — proceeding from the deepest foundations of 
his being. If, later on he attempts to criticise his action 
by the light of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the 
abstract — those unprofitable ideas which are learned by rote, 
or, it may be, borrowed from other people ; if he begins to 
apply general rules, the principles which have guided 
others, to his own case, without sufficiently weighing the 
maxim that one man's meat is another's poison, then he will 
run great risk of doing himself an injustice. The result 
will show where the right course lay. It is only when a 
man has reached the happy age of wisdom that he is ca- 
pable of just judgment in regard either to his own actions 
Dr to those of others. 

It may be that this impulse or instinct is the unconscious 
effect of a kind of prophetic dream which is forgotten when 
we awake — lending our life a uniformity of tone, a dra- 
matic unity, such as could never result from the unstable 
moments of consciousness, when we are so easily led into 
error, so liable to strike a false note. It is in virtue of 
some such prophetic dream that a man feels himself called 
to great achievements in a special sphere, and works in that 
direction from his youth up out of an inner and secret 
feeling that that is his true path, just as by a similar 
instinct the bee is led to build up its cells in the comb. 
This is the impulse which Balthazar Gracian calls la gran 
sinderesis,* — the great power of moral discernment : it is 

* Translator's Note. — This obscure word appears to be derived from 
the Greek 6vvz^p£oo{^s. r Y. and Polyb.) meaning "to observe strictly." 
It occurs in " The Doctor &rA Student " a series of dialogues between a 
doctor of divinity and a student on the laws of England, first pub- 
lished in 1518; and is there (Dialog. I. ch. 13) explained as " a natural 
power of the soule, set in the highest part thereof, moving and stir- 
ring it to good, and abhorring evil." This passage is copied into 
Milton's Commonplace Book, edit. Horwood, § 79. The word is alss 
found in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (vol. vL of the yeai 



172 COUNSELS AXD MAXIMS 

something that a man instinctively feels to be his salvation, 
without which he were lost. 

To act in accordance with abstract principles is a difficult 
matter, and a great deal of practice will be required before 
you can be even occasionally successful ; it often happens 
that the principles do not fit in with your particular case. 
But every man has certain innate concrete principles — a 
part, as it were, of the very blood that flows in his veins, 
the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts, feelings and 
volitions. Usually he has no knowledge of them in any 
abstract form ; it is only when he looks back upon the 
course his life has taken, that he becomes aware of having 
been always led on by them — as though they formed an 
invisible clue which he had. followed unawares. 

§ 49. That Time works great changes, and that aij 
things are in their nature fleeting — these are truths that 
should never be forgotten. Hence, in whatever case you 
may be, it is well to picture to yourself the oppos.te : in 
prosperity to be mindful of misfortune; in friendship, of 
enmity ; in good weather, of days when the sky is overcast, 
in love, of hatred ; in moments of trust, to imagine the be- 
trayal that will make you regret your confidence ; and so, 
too, when you are in evil plight, to have a lively sense of 
happier times — what a lasting source of true worldly wisdom 
were there ! We should then always reflect, and not be so 
very easily deceived ; because, in general, we should antici- 
pate the very changes that the years will bring. 

Perhaps in no form of knowledge is personal experience 
so indispensable as in learning to see that all things are un- 
stable and transitory in this world. There is nothing that, 
in its own place and for the time it lasts, is not a product 
3f necessity, and therefore capable of being fully justified ; 
and it is this fact that makes the circumstances of every 
year, every month, even of every day, seem as though they 
might maintain their right to last to all eternity. But we 

1739) in the sense of an innate discernment of moral principles, where 
a quotation is given f roin Madre Maria de Jesus, abbess of the convent 
of the Conception at Agreda. a mystical writer of the seventeenth 
century, frequently consulted by Philip IV. — and again in the Bologn 
ese Dictionary of 1824. with a similar meaning, illustrated from the 
writings of Salvini (1653-1729). For these references I am indebted 
to the kindness of Mr. Norman Maccoll. 



WORLDL T FORTUNE. 173 

know that this can never be the case, and that in a world 
where all is fleeting, change alone endures. He is a pru- 
dent mail who is not only undeceived by apparent stability, 
but is able to forecast the lines upon which movement will 
take place.* 

But people generally think that present circumstances 
will last, and that matters will go on in the future much as 
they have done in the past. Their mistake arises from the 
fact that they do not understand the causes of the things 
they see — causes which, unlike the effects they produce, 
contain in themselves the germ of future change. The 
effects are all that people know, and they holdfast to them 
on the supposition that those unknown causes, which were 
sufficient to bring them about, will also be able tc maintain 
them as they are. This is a very common error; and the 
fact that it is common is not without its advantage, for it 
means that people always err in unison ; and hence the 
calamity which results from the error affects all alike, and 
is therefore easy to bear ; whereas, if a philosopher makes 
a mistake, he is alone in his error, and so at a double dis- 
advantage.! 

But in saying that we should anticipate the effects of 
time, I mean that we should mentally forecast what they 
are likely to be ; I do not mean that we should practically 
forestall them, by demanding the immediate .performance 
of promises which time alone can fulfill. The man who 
makes this demand will find out that there is no worse or 
more exacting usurer than Time; and that, if you compel 
Time to give money in advance, you will have to pay a rate 

* Chance plays so great a part in all human affairs that when a 
man tries to ward off a remote danger by present sacrifice, the danger 
^ften vanishes under some new and unforeseen development of events; 
and then the sacrifice, in addition to being a complete loss, brings 
about such an altered state of things as to be in itself a source of posi- 
tive danger in the face of this new development. In taking measures 
of precaution, then, it is well not to look too far ahead, but to reckon 
with chance; and often to oppose a courageous front to a danger, in 
the hope that, like many a dark thunder-cloud, it may pass away 
without breaking. 

\ I may remark, parenthically, that all this is a confirmation of 
the principle laid down in " Die Welt als Wille und VorstelluDg," (Bk. 
I. p. 94: 4th edit.), that error always consists in making a wrong in- 
ference, that is, in ascribing a given effect to something that does not 
cause it. 



174 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

of interest more ruinous than any Jew would require. It 
is possible, for instance, to make a tree burst forth into 
leaf, blossom, or even bear fruit within a few days, by the 
application of unslaked lime and artificial heat; but after 
that the tree will wither away. So a young man may abuse his 
strength — it may be only for a few weeks — by trying to do 
at nineteen what he could easily manage at thirty, and Time 
may give him the loan for which he asks ; but the interest 
he will have to pay comes out of the strength of his later 
years ; nay, it is part of his very life itself. 

There are some kinds of illness in which entire restora- 
tion to health is possible only by letting the complaint run 
its natural course ; after which it disappears without leav- 
ing any trace of its existence. But if the sufferer is very 
impatient, and while he is still affected, insists that he is 
completely well, in this case, too, Time will grant the loan, 
and the complaint may be shaken off ; but life-long weak- 
ness and chronic mischief will be the interest paid upon 
it. 

Again, in time of war or general disturbance, a man may 
require ready money at once, and have to sell out his in- 
vestments in land or consols for a third or even a still 
Bmaller fraction of the sum he would have received foi 
them, if he could have waited for the market to right it- 
self, which would have happened in due course; but he 
compels Time to grant him a loan, and his loss is the in- 
terest he has to pay. Or perhaps he wants to go on a long 
journey and requires the money : in one or two years he 
could lay by a sufficient sum out of his income, but he can- 
not afford to wait ; and so he either borrows it or deducts 
it from his capital ; in other words, he gets Time to lend 
him the money in advance. The interest he pays is a 
disordered state of his accounts, and permanent and in- 
creasing deficits, which he can never make good. 

Such is Time's usury ; and all who cannot wait are its 
victims. There is no more thriftless proceeding than to 
try and mend the measured pace of Time. Be careful f 
then, not to become its debtor. 

§ 50. In the daily affairs of life, you will have very 
many opportunities of recognizing a characteristic differ- 
ence between ordinary people and people of prudence and 
discretion. In estimating the oossibility of danger in con- 



WORDLY FORTUNE. 175 

nection with any undertaking, an ordinary man will confine 
his inquiries to the kind of risk that has already attended 
such undertakings in the past; whereas a prudent person 
will look ahead, and consider everything that might possi- 
bly happen in the future, having regard to a certain 
Spanish maxim: lo que no acaece en un aho, acaece en im 
rato — a thing may not happen in a year, and yet may hap- 
pen within two minutes. 

The difference in question is, of course, quite natural; 
for it requires some amount of discernment to calculate 
possibilities; but a man need only have his senses about 
him to see what has already happened 

Do not omit to sacrifice to evil spirits. What I mean is, 
that a man should not hesitate about spending time, trouble, 
and money, or giving up his comfort, or restricting his 
aims and denying himself, if he can thereby shut the door 
on the possibility of misfortune. The most terrible misfor- 
tunes are also the most improbable and remote — the least 
likely to occur. The rule I am giving is best exemplified 
in the practice of insurance — a public sacrifice made on the 
altar of anxiety. Therefore take out your policy of insur- 
ance! 

§51. Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to 
great rejoicings or great lamentation; partly because all 
things are full of change, and your fortune may turn at 
any moment; partly because men are so apt to be deceived 
in their judgment as to what is good or bad for them. 

Almost every one in his time has lamented over some- 
thing which afterwards turned out to be the very best 
thing for him that could have happened — or rejoiced at an 
event which became the source of his greatest sufferings. 
The right state of mind has been finely portrayed by 
Shakespeare ; 

"I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief 
That the first face of neither, on the start, 
Can Woman me unto't.* 

And, in general, it may be said that, if a man takes 
misfortunes quietly, it is because he knows that very many 

* "All's Well that Ends Well," Act Hi. Sc. 2. 



176 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

dreadful tilings may happen in the course of life ; and so 
he looks upon the trouble of the moment as only a very 
small part of that which might come. This is the Stoic 
temper — never to be unmindful of the sad fate of human- 
ity — condicionis ImmancB oblitus ; but always to remember 
that our existence is full of woe and misery, and that the 
ills to which we are exposed are innumerable. Wherever 
he be, a man need only cast a look around, to revive the 
sense of human misery : there before his eyes he can see 
mankind struggling and floundering in torment — all for 
the sake of a wretched existence, barren and unprofitable ! 

If he remembers this, a man will not expect very much 
from life, but learn to accommodate himself to a world 
where all is relative and no perfect state exists ; always 
looking misfortune in the face, and if he cannot avoid it, 
meeting it with courage. 

It should never be forgotten that misfortune, be it great 
or small, is the element in which we live. But that is no 
reason why a man should indulge in fretful complaints, 
and, like Beresford,* pull a long face over the "Miseries 
of Human Life " — and not a single hour is free from them ; 
or still less, call upon the Deity at every flea-bite — in 
pulicis ?norsu Deum invocare. Our aim should be to look 
well about us, to ward off misfortune by going to meet it, 
to attain such perfection and refinement in averting the 
disagreeble things of life — whether they come from our 
fellow-men or from the physical world — that, like a clever 
fox, we may slip out of the way of every mishap, great or 
small ; remembering that a mishap is generally only our 
own awkwardness in disguise. 

The main reason why misfortune falls less heavily upon us, 
if we have looked upon its occurrence as not impossible, and, 
as the saying is, prepared ourselves for it, may be this : if, 
before the misfortune comes, we have quietly thought over 
it as something which may or may not happen, the whole 
of its extent and range is known to us, and we can, at least, 
determine how far it will affect us ; so that, if it really 
arrives, it does not depress us unduly — its weight is not 
felt to be greater than it actually is. But if no preparation 

* Translator's Note. — Rev. James Beresford (1764-1840) s miscel- 
laneous writer. The full title of this, his chief work, is " The 
Miseries of Human Life ; or the last groans of Timothy Testy and 
Samuel Sensitive, with a few supplementary sighs from Mrs. Testy." 



WORLDL T FORTUNE. 177 

has been made to meet it, and it comes unexpectedly, the 
mind is in a state of terror for the moment and unable to 
measure the full extent of the calamity ; it seems so far- 
reaching in its effects that the victim might well think 
there was no limit to them in any case, its range is exag- 
gerated. In the same way, darkness and uncertainty always 
increase the sense of danger. And, of course, if we have 
thought over the possibility of misfortune, we have also at 
the same time considered the sources to which w T e shall look 
for help and consolation ; or, at any rate, we have accus- 
tomed ourselves to the idea of it. 

There is nothing that better fits us to endure the- mis- 
fortunes of life with composure, than to know for certain 
that everything that happens — from the smallest up to the 
greatest facts of existence — happens of necessity.* A man 
soon accommodates himself to the inevitable — to something 
that must be ; and if he knows that nothing can happen 
except of necessity, he will see that things cannot be other 
than they are, and that even the strangest chances in the 
world are just as much a product of necessity as phenom- 
ena which obey well-known rules and turn out exactly in 
accordance with expectation. Let me here refer to whatl 
have said elsewhere on the soothing effect of the knowledge 
that all things are inevitable and a product of necessity. f 

If a man is steeped in the knowledge of this truth, he 
will, first of all, do what he can, and then readily endure 
what he must. 

AVe may regard the petty vexations of life that are con- 
stantly happening, as designed to keep us in practice for 
bearing great misfortunes, so that we may not become com- 
pletely enervated by a career of prosperity. A man should 
be a Siegfried, armed cap-a-pie, toward the small troubles 
of every day — those little differences we have with our 
fellow-men, insignificant disputes, unbecoming conduct 
in other people, petty gossip, and many other similar an- 
noyances of life ; he should not feel them at all, much less 
take them to heart and brood over them, but hold them at 

* This is a truth which I have firmly established in mv prize-essay 
on the " Freedom of the Will, " where the reader will find a de- 
tailed explanation of the grounds on which it rests. Cf . especially p. 
60. [Schopenhauer's Works, 4th Edit., vol. iv. — Jr.] 

i Cf. " Welt als Wille ur»d ^orstellung/' Bk.I. p. 361 (4th edit.} 



178 COUNSELS AND MAXTMS. 

arm's length and push them out of his way, like stones 
that lie in the road, and upon no account think about them 
and give them a place in his reflections. 

§ 52. What people commonly call "Fate" is, as a gen- 
eral rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct 
There is a fine passage in Homer,* illustrating the truth 01 
this remark, where the poet praises nrjti^, — shrewd counsel; 
and his advice is worthy of all attention. For if wicked- 
uess is atoned for only in another world, stupidity gets its 
reward here — although, now and then, mercy may be 
shown to the offender. 

It is not ferocity but cunning that strikes fear into the 
heart and forebodes danger; so true it is that the human 
brain is a more terrible weapon than the lion's paw. 

The most finished man of the world would be one who 
was never irresolute and never in a hurry. 

§ 53. Courage comes next to prudence as a quality of 
mind very essential to happiness. It is quite true that no one 
can endow himself with either, since a man inherits pru- 
dence from his mother and courage from his father ; still, 
if he has these qualities, he can do much to develop them 
by means of resolute exercise. 

In this world, " where the game is played with loaded 
dice," a man must have a temper of iron, with armor proof 
to the blows of fate, and weapons to make his way against 
men. Life is one long battle ; we have to fight at every 
step : and Voltaire very rightly says that if we succeed, it 
is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the 
weapon in our hand — on ne reussit dans ce monde qu'a la 
pointe de Vepe, et on meurt les amies a la main. It is a 
cowardly soul that shrinks or grows faint and despondent 
as soon as the storm begins to gather, or even when the 
first cloud appears on the horizon. Our motto should be 
"No surrender;" and far from yielding to the ills of life, 
let us take fresh courage from misfortune; 

" Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito." * 

As long as the issue of any matter fraught with peril is 

* i( Iliad," xxiii. 313, sqq. * Virgil, "^neid," vi., 95. 



WORLDL T FORTUNE. 1 79 

still in doubt, and there is yet some possibility left that all 
may come right, no one should ever tremble or think of 
anything but resistance — just as a man should not despair 
of the weather if he can see a bit of blue sky anywhere. 
Let our attitude be such that we should not quake even if 
the world fell in ruins about us : 

" Si fractus illabatur orbis 
Iinpavidum ferient ruinae."* 

Our whole life itself — let alone its blessings — would not 
be worth such a cowardly trembling and shrinking of the 
heart. Therefore, let us face life courageously and show 
a firm front to every ill : 

" Quocirca vivite fortes 
Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus." 

Still, it is possible for courage to be carried to an excess 
and to degenerate into rashness. It may even be said that 
some amount of fear is necessary, if we are to exist at all 
in the world, and cowardice is only the exaggerated form 
of it. This truth has been very well expressed by Bacon, 
in his account of " Terror Panicus ; " and the etymological 
account which he gives of its meaning, is very superior to 
the ancient explanation preserved for us by Plutarch, f 
He connects the expression with Pan, the personification 
of Nature ;J and observes that fear is innate in every 
living thing, and, in fact, tends to its preservation, but 
that it is apt to come into play without due cause, and 
that man especially exposed to it. The chief feature of 
this " Panic Terror " is that there is no clear notion of any 
definite danger bound up with it ; that it presumes rather 
than knows that danger exists ; and that, in case of need, 
it pleads fright itself as the reason for being afraid. 

* Horace, Odes iii. 3. f " De Iside et Osiride," ch. 14. 

\ " De Sapientia Veterum," c. 6. " Natura eniin rerum omnibus 
viventibus indidit inetum ac formidinem, vitae atque essentia? suae 
conservatricem, ac mala ingruentia vitantem et depellentem. 
Verumtamen eadem natura modum tenere nescia est : sed timoribus 
salutaribus semper vanos et innanes admiscet ; adeo ut omnia (si 
intus conspici darentur) Panicis terroribusplenissimasint, praesertina 
humana." 



180 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE AGES OF LIFE. 

There is a very fine saying of Voltaire's to the effect 
that every age of life has its own peculiar mental char- 
acter, and thai: a man will feel completely unhappy if his 
mind is not in accordance with his years: 

"Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son age, 
De son age a tout le inalkeur." 

It will, L herefore, be a fitting close to our speculations 
upon the nature of happiness, if we glance at the changes 
which the various periods of life produce in us. 

Our whole life long it is the present, and the present 
alone, that we actually possess; the only difference is that 
\it the beginning of life we look forward to a long future, 
and that toward the end we look back upon a long past; 
also that our temperament, but not our character, under- 
goes certain well-known changes, which make the present 
wear a different color at each period of life. 

I have elsewhere stated that in childhood we are more 
given to using our intellect than our will; and I have ex- 
plained why this is so.* It is just for this reason that the 
first quarter of life is so happy; as we look back upon it in 
after years, it seem a sort of lost paradise. In childhood 
our relations with others are limited, our wants are few — 
in a word, there is little stimulus for the will; and so our 
chief concern is the extension of our knowledge. The 
intellect — like the brain, which attains its full size in the 
seventh year,f is developed early, though it takes time to 

* Translator 's Note. — Schopenhauer refers to "Die Welt als Wille 
und Vorstellung," Bk. II. c. 31, p. 451 (4th. edit.), where he explains 
that this is due to the fact that at that period of life the brain am- 
nervous system are much more developed than any other part of the 
organism. 

Translator's Note. — This statement is not quite correct. The 
weight of the brain increases rapidly up to the seventh year, more 
slowly between the sixteenth and the twentieth year, still more slow- 
ly till between thirty and forty years of age, when it attains its maxi- 
mum. iU each decennial period after this, it is supposed to deTeasf 
in weight on the average an ounce for every ten years, 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 181 

mature and it explores the whole world of its surroundings 
in its constant search for nutriment: it is then that existence 
is in itself an ever fresh delight, and all things sparkle with 
the charm of novelty. 

This is why the years of childhood are like a long poem. 
For the function of poetry, as of all art, is to grasp the idea 
— in the Platonic sense; in other words, to apprehend a 
particular object in such a way as to perceive its essential 
nature, the characteristics it has in common with all other 
objects of the same kind: so that a single object appears as 
the representative of a class, and the results of one experi- 
ence hold good for a thousand. 

It may be thought that my remarks are opposed to fact, 
and that the child is never occupied with anything beyond 
the individual objects or events which are presented to it 
from time to time, and then only in so far as they interest 
and excite its will for the moment; but this is not really the 
case. In those early years, life — in the full meaning of the 
word, is something so new and fresh, and its sensations are 
so keen and unblunted by repetition, that, in the midst of 
all its pursuits and without any clear consciousness of what 
it is doing, the child is always silently occupied in grasping 
the nature of life itself — in arriving at its fundamental 
character and general outline by means of separate scenes 
and experiences; or, to use Spinoza's phraseology, the child 
is learning to see the things and persons about it sub specie 
mternitatis — as particular manifestations of universal 
law. 

The younger we are, then, the more does every individual 
object represent for us the whole class to which it belongs; 
but as the years increase, this becomes less and less the 
case. That is the reason why youthful impressions are so 
different from those of old age. And that is also why the 
slight knowledge and experience gained in childhood and 
youth afterward come to stand as the permanent rubric, 
or heading, for all the knowledge acquired in later life — 
those early forms of knowledge passing into categories, as 
it were, under which the results of subsequent experience 
are classified; though a clear consciousness of what is being 
done, does not always attend upon the process. 

In this way the earliest years of a man's life lay the foun- 
dation of his view of the world, whether it be shallow or 
deep, and although this view may fye extended and per- 



182 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

fected later on, it is not materially altered. It is an effect 
of this purely objective and therefore poetical view of the 
world — essential to the period of childhood and promoted 
by the as yet undeveloped state of the volitional energy — 
that, as children, we are concerned much more with the ac- 
quisition of pure knowledge than with exercising the 
power of will. Hence that grave, fixed look observable in so 
many children, of which Kaphael makes such a happy use 
in his depiction of cherubs, especially in the picture of the 
"Sistine Madonna." The years of childhood are thus ren- 
dered so full of bliss that the memory of them is al- 
ways coupled with longing and regret. 

While we thus eagerly apply ourselves to learning the out- 
ward aspect of things, as the primitive method of under- 
standing the objects about us, education aims at instilling 
into us ideas. But ideas furnish no information as to the 
real and essential nature of objects, which, as the foundation 
and true content of all knowledge, can be reached only by 
the process called intuition. This is a kind of knowledge 
which can in no wise be instilled into us from without; 
we must arrive at it by and for ourselves. 

Hence a man's intellectual as well as his moral qualities 
proceed from the depths of his own nature, and are not the 
result of external influences ; and no educational scheme — 
of Pestalozzi, or of any one else — can turn a born simpleton 
into a man of sense. The thing is impossible ! He was 
born a simpleton, and a simpleton he will die. 

It is the depth and intensity of this early intuitive 
knowledge of the external world that explain why the ex- 
periences of childhood take such a firm hold on the 
memory. When we were young, we were completely 
absorbed in our immediate surroundings ; there was noth- 
ing to distract our attention from them ; we looked upon 
the objects about us as though they were the only ones of 
their kind, as though, indeed, nothing else existed at all. 
Later on, when we come to find out how many things 
there are in the world, this primitive state of mind van- 
ishes, and with it our patience. 

I have said elsewhere* that the world, considered as 

* " Die Welt als Will e und Vorstellung," Bk. II. c 31, p 426-7 
(4th Edit.), to whieh the reader is referred for a detail explanation 
of my meaning. 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 183 

object — in other words, as it is presented to us objectively 
— wears in general a pleasing aspect ; but that in the 
world, considered as the subject — that is, in regard to its 
inner nature, which is will — pain and trouble predominates 
I may be allowed to express the matter, briefly, thus : the 
world is glorious to look at, but dreadful in reality. 

Accordingly, we find that, in the years of childhood, 
the world is much better known to us on its outer or ob- 
jective side, namely as the presentation of will, than on 
the side of its inner nature, namely, as the will itself. 
Since the objective side wears a pleasing aspect, and the 
inner or subjective side, with its tale of horror, remains as 
yet unknown, the youth, as his intelligence develops, 
takes all the forms of beauty that he sees, in nature and in 
art, for so many objects of blissful existence ; they are so 
beautiful to the outward eye that, on their inner side, they 
must, he thinks, be much more beautiful still. So the 
world lies before him like another Eden; and this is the 
Arcadia in which we are all born. 

A little later, this state of mind gives birth to a thirst 
for real life — the impulse to do and suffer — which drives a 
man forth into the hurly-burly of the world. There he 
learns the other side of existence — the inner side, the will, 
which is thwarted at every step. Then comes the great 
period of disillusion, a period of very gradual growth, but 
once it has fairly begun, a man will tell you that he has got 
over all his false notions — Vdge des illusions est passe; and 
yet the process is only beginning, and it goes on extending 
its sway and applying more and more to the whole of life. 
So it may be said that in childhood life looks like the 
scenery in a theater, as you view it from a distance; and 
that in old age it is like the same scenery when you come 
up quite close to it. 

And lastly, there is another circumstance that contributes 
to the happiness of childhood. As spring commences, the 
young leaves on the trees are similar in color and much the 
same in shape; and iu the first years of life we all resemble 
one another and harmonize very well. But with puberty 
divergence begins; and, like the radii of a circle, we go 
further and further apart. 

The period of youth, which forms the remainder of this 
earlier half of our existence — and how many advantages it 
has over the later half — is troubled and made miserable by 



184 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

the pursuit of happiness, as though there were no doubt 
that it can be met with somewhere in life — a hope that al- 
ways ends in failure and leads to discontent. An illusory 
image of some vague future bliss — born of a dream and 
shaped by fancy — floats before our eyes: and we search for 
the reality in vain. So it is that the young man is gener- 
ally dissatisfied with the position in which he finds himself, 
whatever it may be; he ascribes his disappointment solely 
to the state of things that meets him on his first intro- 
duction to life, when he had expected something very dif- 
ferent; whereas it is only the vanity and wretchedness of 
human life everywhere that he is now for the first time 
experiencing. 

It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early 
training could eradicate the idea that the world has a great 
deal to offer him. But the usual result of education is to 
strengthen this delusion; and our first ideas of life are 
generally taken from fictiou rather than from fact. 

In the bright dawn of our youthful days, the poetry of 
life spreads out a gorgeous vision before us, and we torture, 
ourselves by longing to see it realized. W3 might as well 
wish to grasp the rainbow! The youth expects his career to 
be like an interesting romance; and there lies the germ of 
that disappointment which I have been describing.* What 
lends a charm to all these visions is just the fact that they 
are visionary and not real, and that in contemplating them 
we are in the sphere of pure knowledge, which is sufficient 
in itself and free from the noise and struggle of life. To 
try and realize those visions is to make them an object of 
will — a process which always involves pain, f 

If the chief feature of the earlier half of life is a never- 
satisfied longing after happiness, the later half is char- 
acterized by the dread of misfortune. For, as we advance 
in years, it becomes in a greater or less degree clea" 
that all happiness is chimaerical in its nature, and that 
pain alone is real. Accordingly, in later years, we, or at 
least, the more prudent among us, are more intent upon 
eliminating what is painful from our lives and making our 

* Cf. loc. cit. p. 428. 

•{•Let me refer the reader, if lie is interested in the subject, to the 
volume already cited, chapter 37. 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 185 

position secure, than on the pursuit of positive pleasure. I 
may observe, by the way, that in old age we are better able 
to prevent misfortunes from coming, and in youth better 
able to bear them when they come. 

In my young days, I was always pleased to hear a ring at 
my door: ah! thought 1, now for something pleasant. But 
in later life my feelings on such occasions were rather akin 
to dismay than to pleasure; heaven help me! thought I, what 
am I to do? A similar revulsion of feeling in regard to the 
world of men takes place in all persons of any talent or dis- 
tinction. For that very reason they cannot be said properly 
to belong to the world; in a greater or less degree, according 
to the extent of their superiority, they stand alone. In their 
youth they have a sense of being abandoned by the world; 
but later on, they feel as though they had escaped it. The 
earlier feeling is an unpleasant one, and rests upon ignorance, 
the second is pleasurable — for in the meantime they have 
come to know what the world is. 

The consequence of this is that, as compared with the ear- 
lier, the later half of life, like the second part of a musical 
period, has less of passionate longing and more restfulness 
about it. And why is this the case? Simply because, in 
youth, a man fancies that the p e is a prodigious amount of 
happiness and pleasure to be had in the world, only that it 
is difficult to come by it; whereas, when he becomes old, he 
knows that there is nothing of the kind; he makes his mind 
completely at ease on the matter, enjoys the present hour 
as well as he can, and even takes a pleasure in trifles. 

The chief result gained by experience of life is clearness 
of view. This is what distinguishes the man of mature 
age, and makes the world wear such a different aspect from 
that which it presented in his youth or boyhood. It is only 
then that he sees things quite plain, and takes them for 
that which they really are; while in earlier years he saw a 
phantom-world put together out of the whims and crotchets 
of his own mind, inherited prejudice and strange delusion; 
the real world was hidden from him, or the vision of it 
distorted. The first thing that experience finds to do is to 
free us from the phantoms of the brain — those false notions 
that have been put into us in youth. 

To prevent their entrance at all would, of course, be the 
best form of education, even though it were only negative 
in aim; but it would be a task full of difficulty. At first 



1 86 CO UNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

the child's horizon would have to be limited as much as 
possible, and yet within that limited sphere none but clear 
and correct notions would have to be given; only after the 
child had properly appreciated everything within it, might 
the sphere be gradually enlarged; care being always taken 
that nothing was left obscure, or half or wrongly understood. 
The consequence of this training would be that the child's 
notions of men and things would always be limited and 
simple in their character; but on the other hand, they 
would be clear and correct, and only need to be extended, 
not to be rectified. The same line might be pursued on 
into the period of youth. This method of education would 
lay special stress upon the prohibition of novel reading; and 
the place of novels would be taken by suitable biographical 
literature — the life of Franklin, for instance, or Moritz's 
"Anton Reiser." * 

In our early days we fancy that the leading events in our 
life, and the persons who are going to play an important 
part in it, will make their entrance to the sound of drums 
and trumpets; but when, in old age, we look back, we find 
that they all came in quite quietly, slipped in, as it were, 
by the side-door, almost unnoticed. 

From the point of view we have been taking up until 
now, life may be compared to a piece of embroidery, of 
which, during the first half of his time, a man gets a sight 
of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong. 
The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but it is more 
instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have 
been worked together. 

Intellectual superiority, even if it is of the highest kind, 
will not secure for a man a preponderating place in conver- 
sation until after he is forty years old. For age and experi- 
ence, though they can never be a substitute for intellectual 
talent, may far outweigh it; and even in a person of the 
meanest capacity, they give a certain counterpoise to the 
power of an extremely intellectual man so long as the latter 
is young. Of course I allude here to personal superiority, 
not to the place a man may gain by his works. 

And on passing his fortieth year any man of the slightest 



* Translator s Note. — Moritz was a miscellaneous writer of the last 
century (1757-93). His "Anton Reiser," composed in the form of fa 
Hovel, is practically an autobiography. 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 187 

power of mind — any man, that is, who has more than the 
sorry share of intellect with which Nature has endowed 
five-sixths of mankind — will hardly fail to show some trace 
of misanthropy. For, as is natural, he has by that time 
inferred other people's character from an examination of 
his own; with the result that he has been gradually disap- 
pointed to find that in the qualities of the head or in those 
of the heart — and usually in both — he reaches a level to 
which they do not attain; so he gladly avoids having any- 
thing more to do with them. For it may be said, in gen- 
eral, that every man will lo^e or hate solitude — in other 
words, his own society — j*ust in proportion as he is worth 
anything in himself. Kant has some remarks upon this 
kind of misanthropy in his "Critique of the Faculty ot 
Judgment." * 

In a young man, it is a bad sign, as well from an intel- 
lectual as from a moral point of view, if he is precocious in 
understanding the ways of the world, and in adapting him- 
self to its pursuits; if he at once knows how to deal with 
men, and enters upon life, as it were, fully prepared. It 
argues a vulgar nature. On the other hand, to be sur- 
prised and astonished at the way people act, and to be 
clumsy and cross-grained in having to do with them, indi- 
cates a character of the nobler sort. 

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due 
to the fact that, when we are ascending the hill of life, 
death is not visible : it lies down at the bottom of the 
other side. But once we have crossed the top of the hill, 
death comes in view — death, which, until then, was known 
to us only by hearsay. This makes our spirits droop, for 
at the same time we begin to feel that our vital powers 
are on the ebb. A grave seriousness now takes the place 
of that early extravagance of spirit ; and the change is 
noticeable even in the expression of a man's face. As long 
as we are young, people may tell us what they please ! we 
look upon life as endless and use our time recklessly ; but 
the older we become, the more we practice economy. For 
toward the close of life, every day we live gives us the 
same kind of sensation as the criminal experiences at every 
step on his way to be tried. 

From the standpoint of youth, life seems to stretch 

* 'Kritik der TJrtheilskraft," Part I., § 29. Note ad fin. 



188 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

awa) r into an endless future; from the standpoint of old 
age, to go back but a little way into the past ; so that, at 
the beginning, life presents us with a picture in which the 
objects appear a great way off, as though we had reversed 
our telescope ; while in the end everything seems to close. 
To see how short life is, a man must have grown old, that 
is to say, he must have lived long. 

On the other hand, as the years increase, things look 
smaller, one and all ; and life, which had so firm and 
stable a base in the days of our youth, now seems nothing 
but a rapid flight of moments, every one of them illusory ; 
we have come to see that the whole world is vanity ! 

Time itself seems to go at a much slower pace when we 
are young ; so that not only is the first quarter of life the 
happiest, it is also the longest of all ; it leaves more mem- 
ories behind it. If a man were put to it, he could tell you 
more out of the first quarter of his life than out of two of 
the remaining periods. Nay, in the spring of life, as in 
the spring of the year, the days reach a length that is 
positively tiresome; but in the autumn, whether of the 
year or of life, though they are short, they are more genial 
and uniform. 

But why is it that to an old man hlr past life appears so 
short ? For this reason : his memory is> short ; and so he 
fancies that his life has been short too. lie no longer re- 
members the insignificant parts of it, and much that was 
unpleasant is now forgotten ; how little, then, there is 
left ! For, in general, a man's memory is as imperfect as 
his intellect ; and he must make a practice of reflecting 
upon the lessons he has learned and the events he has ex- 
perienced, if he does not want them both to sink gradually 
into the gulf of oblivion. Now, we are unaccustomed to 
reflect upon matters of no importance, or, as a rule, upon 
things that we have found disagreeable, and yet that is 
necessary if the memory of them is to be preserved. But 
the class of things that may be called insignificant is con- 
tinually receiving fresh additions : much that wears an air 
of importance at first, gradually becomes of no consequence 
at all from the fact of its frequent repetition ; so that in 
the end we actually lose count of the number of times it 
happens. Hence we are better able to remember ths 
events of -our early than of our later years. The longer W9 
live, the fewer are the things that we can call important or 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 189 

significant enough to deserve further consideration, and by 
this alone can they be fixed in the memory ; in other 
words, they are forgotten as soon as they are past. Thus 
it is that time runs on, leaving always fewer traces of its 
passage. 

Further, if disagreeable things have happened to us we 
do not care to ruminate upon them, least of all when they 
touch our vanity, as is usually the case ; for few mis- 
fortunes fall upon us for which we can be held entirely 
blameless: So people are very ready to forget mauy things 
that are disagreeable, as well as many that are unimpor- 
tant. 

It is from this double cause that our memory is so 
short ; and a man's recollection of what has happened al- 
ways becomes proportionately shorter, the more things that 
have occupied him in life. The things we did in years gone 
by, the events that happened long ago, are like those ob- 
jects on the coast which, to the seafarer on his outward 
voyage, become smaller every minute, more unrecognizable 
and harder to distinguish. 

Again, it sometimes happens tnat memory and imagi- 
nation will call up some long past scene as vividly as if it 
had occurred only yesterday: so that the event in question 
seems to stand very near to the present time. The reason 
of this is that it is impossible to call up all the intervening 
period in the same vivid way, as there is no one figure per- 
vading it which can be taken in at a glance; and besides 
most of the things that happened in that period are forgot- 
ten, and all that remains of it is the general knowledge that 
we have lived through it — a mere notion of abstract exist- 
ence, not a direct vision of some particular experience. 
It is this that causes some single event of long ago to ap- 
pear as though it took place but yesterday: the intervening 
time vanishes, and the whole of life looks incredibly short. 
Nay. there are occasional moments in old age when we can 
scarcely believe that we are so advanced in years, or that 
the long past lying behind us has had any real existence — 
a feeling which is mainly due to the circumstance that the 
present always seems fixed and immovable as we look at it. 
These and similar mental phenomena are ultimately to be 
traced to the fact that it is not our nature in itself, but only 
the outward presentation of it, that lies in time, and that 



190 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

the present is the point of contact between the world as 
subject and the world as object. * 

Again, why is it that in youth we can see no eud to the 
years that seem to lie before us? Because we are obliged 
to find room for all the things we hope to attain in life. 
We cram the years so full of projects that if we were to try 
and carry them all out, death would come prematurely 
though we reached the age of Methuselah. 

Another reason why life looks so long when we are young 
is that we are apt to measure its length by the few years we 
have already lived. In those early years things are new 
to us and so they appear important; we dwell upon them 
after they have happened and of ten call them to mind: and 
thus in youth life seems replete with incident, and there- 
fore of long duration. 

Sometimes we credit ourselves with a longing to be in 
some distant spot, whereas, in truth, we are only longing 
to have the time back again which we spent there — days 
when we were younger and fresher, than we are now. In 
those moments Time mocks us by wearing the mask of space, 
and if we travel to the spot, we can see how much we have 
been deceived. 

There are two ways of reaching a great age, both of 
which presuppose a sound constitution as a conditio sine 
qud non. They may be illustrated by two lamps, one of 
which burns a long time with very little oil, because it has 
a very thin wick: and the other just as long, though it has 
a very thick one, because there is plenty of oil to feed it. 
Here, the oil is the vital energy, and the difference in the 
wick is the manifold way in which the vital energy is 
used. 

Up to our thirty-sixth year, we may be compared, in re- 
spect of the way in which we use our vital energy, to people 
who live on the interest of their money; what they spend 
to-day, they have again to-morrow. But from the age of 
thirty-six onward, our position is like that of the investor 

* Translator 's Note. — By this remark Schopenhauer means that will, 
whicn, as he argues, forms the inner reality underlying all the phe- 
nomena of life and nature, is not in itself affected by time; but that 
on the other hand, time is necessary for the objectification of the will 
for the will as presented in the passing phenomena of the world. 
Time is thus definable as the condition of change, and the present 
time as the only point of contact between, reality and appearance. 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 191 

who begins to entrench upon his capital. At first he hardly 
notices any difference at all, as the o-reater part of his 
expenses is covered by the interest of his securities; and 
if the deficit is but slight, he pays no attention to it. But 
the deficit goes on increasing, until he awakes to the fact 
that it is becoming more serious every day; his position be- 
comes less and less secure, and he feels himself growing 
poorer and poorer, while he has no expectation of this drain 
upon his resources coming to an end. His fall from wealth 
to poverty becomes faster every moment — like the fall of a 
solid body in space, until at last he has absolutely nothing 
left. A man is truly in a woeful plight if both the terms 
of this comparison — his vital energy and his wealth — really 
begin to melt away at one and the same time. It is the. 
dread of this calamity that makes love of possession increase 
with age. 

On the other hand, at the beginning of life — in the years 
before we attain majority, and for some little time after- 
ward — the state of our vital energy puts us on a level with 
those who each year lay by a part of their interest and add 
it to their capital: in other words, not only does their inter- 
est come in regularly, but the capital is constantly receiv- 
ing additions. This happy condition of affairs is some- 
times brought about — with health as with money — under 
the watchful care of some honest guardian. Oh happy 
youth, and sad old age! 

Nevertheless, a man should economize his strength even 
when he is young. Aristotle * observes that among those 
who were victors at Olympia only two or three gained a 
prize at two different periods, once in boyhood and then 
when they came to be men; and the reason of this was that 
the premature efforts which the training involved, so com- 
pletely exhausted their powers that they failed to last on 
into manhood. As this is true of muscular, so it is still 
more true of nervous energy, of which all intellectual 
achievements are the manifestation. Hence, those infant 
prodigies — ingenia praecocia — the fruit of a hot-house 
education, who surprise us by their cleverness as children, 
afterward turn out very ordinary folk. Nay, the manner 
in which boys are forced into an early acquaintance with 
the ancient tongues may, perhaps be to blame for the dull- 

* "Politics," 



192 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

ness and lack of judgment which distinguish so many 
learned persons. 

I have said that almost every man's character seems to be 
specially suited to some one period of life, so that on reach- 
ing it the man is at his best. Some people are charming so 
long as they are young, and afterward there is nothing at- 
tractive about them; others are vigorous and active in man- 
hood, aud then lose all the value they possess as they ad- 
vance in years; many appear to best advantage in old age, 
wheu their character assumes a gentler tone, as becomes 
men who have seen the world and take life easily. This is 
often the case with the French. 

This peculiarity must be due to the fact that the man's 
character has something in it akin to the qualities of youth 
or manhood or old age — something which accords with one 
or another of these periods of life, or perhaps acts as a cor- 
rective to its special failings. 

The mariner observes the progress he makes only by the 
way in which objects on the coast fade away into the dis- 
tance and apparently decrease in size. In the same way a 
man becomes conscious that he is advancing in years when 
he finds that people older than himself begin to seem young 
to him. 

It has been already remarked that the older a man be- 
comes, the fewer are the traces left in his mind by all that 
he sees, does or experiences, and the cause of this has been 
explained. There is thus a sense in which it may be said 
that it is only in youth that a man lives with a full degree of 
consciousness and that he is only half alive when he is 
old. As the years advance, his consciousness of what 
goes on about him dwindles, and the things of life hur- 
ry by without making any impression upon him, just 
as none is made by a work of art seen for the thous- 
andth time. A man does what his hand finds to do, and 
afterward he does not know whether he has done it or 
not. 

As life becomes more and more unconscious the nearer 
it approaches the point at which all consciousness ceases, the 
course of time itself seems to increase in rapidity. In 
childhood all the things and circumstances of life are novel 
and that is sufficient to awake us to the full consciousness of 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 193 

existence: hence, at that age, the day seems of such immense 
length. The same thing happens when we are traveling; 
one month seems longer then than four spent at home. 
Still, though time seems to last longer when we are yon ng 
or on a journey, the sense of novelty does not prevent it 
from now and then in reality hanging heavily upon our 
hands under both these circumstances, at any rate more than 
is the case when we are old or staying at home. But the 
intellect gradually becomes so rubbed clown and blunted by 
long habituation to such sensations that things have a con- 
stant tendency to produce less and less impression upon us 
as they pass by; and this makes time seem increasingly less 
important, and therefore shorter in duration: the hours of 
the boy are longer than the days of the old man. Ac- 
cordingly, time goes faster and faster the longer we live, 
like a ball rolling downhill. Or, to take another example: 
as in a revolving disc the further apointlies from the center 
the more rapid is its rate of progression, so it is in the 
wheel of life; the further you stand from the beginning, the 
faster time moves for you. Hence it may be said that as 
far as concerns the immediate sensation that time makes 
upon our minds, the length of any given year is in direct 
proportion to the number of times it will divide our whole 
life: for instance, at the age of fifty the year appears to us 
only one-tenth as long as it did at the age of five. 

This variation in the rate at which time appears to 
move, exercises a most decided influence upon the whole 
nature of our existence at every period of it. First of all, 
it causes childhood — even though it embrace only a span 
of fifteen years — to seem the longest period of life, and 
therefore the richest in reminiscences. Next, it brings it 
about that a man is apt to be bored just in proportion as 
he is young. Consider, for instance, that constant need of 
occupation — whether it is work or play — that is shown by 
children : if they come to an end of both work and play, a 
terrible feeling of boredom ensues. Even in youth people 
ire by no means free from this tendency, and dread the 
♦lours when they have nothing to do. As manhood ap- 
proaches, boredom disappears ; and old men find the time 
too short when their days fly past them like arrows from a 
bow. Of course, I must be understood to speak of men, 
not of decrepit brutes. With this increased rapidity of 
time, boredom mostW masses away as we advance in life ; 



1 94 CO UN8ELS AND MA X1MS. 

and as the passions with all their attendant pain are then 
laid asleep, the burden of life is, on the whole, appreciably 
lighter in later years than in youth, provided, of course, 
that health remains. So it is that the period immediately 
preceding the weakness and troubles of old age receives 
the name of a man's best years. 

That may be a true appellation, in view of the comfort- 
able feeling which those years bring ; but for all that the 
years of youth, when our consciousness is lively and open 
to every sort of impression, have this privilege — that then 
the seeds are sown and the buds come forth ; it is the 
springtime of the mind. Deep truths may be perceived, 
but can never be excogitated — that is to say, the first 
knowledge of them is immediate, called forth by some 
momentary impression. This knowledge is of such a kind 
as to be attainable only when the impressions are strong, 
lively and deep ; and if we are to be acquainted with deep 
truth, everything depends upon a proper use of our early 
years. In later life, we may be better able to work upon 
other people — upon the world, because our natures are 
then finished and rounded off, and no more a prey to fresh 
views ; but then the world is less able to work upon us. 
These are the years of action and achievement ; while youth 
l s the time for forming fundamental conceptions and lay- 
ing down the groundwork of thought. 

In youth it is fhe outward aspect of things that most 
engages us ; while in age, thought or reflection is the 
oredominating quality of the mind. Hence, youth is the 
time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy. 
In practical affairs it is the same : a man shapes his 
resolutions in youth more by the impression that the out- 
ward world makes upon him ; whereas, when he is old, it 
is thought that determines his actions. This is partly to 
be explained by the fact that it is only when a man is old 
that the results of outward observation are present in 
sufficient numbers to allow of their being classified ac- 
cording to the ideas they represent — a process which in 
its turn causes those ideas to be more fully understood in 
all their bearings, and the exact value and amount of trust 
to be placed in them, fixed and determined, while at the 
same time he has grown accustomed to the impressions 
produced by the various phenomena of life, and their 
effects on him are no longer what they were. 



THE AGES OF LIFS. 195 

Contrarily, in youth, the impressions that things make, 
that is to say, the outward aspects of life, are so overpower- 
Ingly strong, especially in the case of people of lively and 
imaginative disposition, that they view the world like a 
picture ; and their chief concern is the figure they cut in 
it, the appearance they present ; nay, they are unaware of 
the extent to which this is the case. It is a quality of 
mind that shows itself — if in no other way — in that personal 
vanity, and that love of fine clothes, which distinguish 
young people. 

There can be no doubt that the intellectual powers are 
most capable of enduring great and sustained efforts in 
youth, up to the age of thirty-five at latest ; from which 
period their strength begins to decline, though very gradu- 
ally. Still, the later years of life, and even old age itself, 
are not without their intellectual compensation. It is 
only then that a man can be said to be really rich in ex- 
perience or in learning ; he has then had time and oppor- 
tunity enough to enable him to see and think over life 
from all its sides ; he has been able to compare one thing 
with another, and to discover points of contact and con- 
necting links, so that only then are the true relations of 
things rightly understood. Further, in old age there 
comes an increased depth in the knowledge that was ac- 
quired in youth ; a man has now many more illustrations 
of any ideas lie may have attained ; things which he 
thought he knew when he was young, he now knows in 
reality. And besides, his range of knowledge is wider ; 
and in whatever direction it extends, it is thorough, and 
therefore formed into a consistent and connected whole ; 
whereas in youth knowledge is always defective and 
fragmentary. 

A complete and adequate motion of life can never be 
attained by any one who does not reach old age ; for it 
is only the old man who sees life whole and knows its 
natural course ; it is only he who is acquainted — and this 
is most important — not only with its entrance, like the 
rest of mankind, but with its exit too ; so that he alone 
has a full sense of its utter vanity ; while the others never 
cease to labor under the false notion that everything will 
come right in the end. 

On the other hand, there is more conceptive power in 



196 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, 

youth, and at that time of life a man can make more out of 
the little that he knows. In age, judgment, penetration 
and thoroughness predominate. Youth is the time for 
amassing the material for a knowledge of the world that 
shall be distinctive and peculiar — for an original view of life, 
in other words, the legacy that a man of genius leaves to 
his fellow-men; it is, however, only in later years that he 
becomes master of his material. Accordingly it will be 
found that, as a rule, a great writer gives his best work to 
the world when he is about fifty years of age. But though 
the tree of knowledge must reach its full height before it can 
bear fruit, the roots of it lie in youth. 

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, 
thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately pre- 
ceding it, let alone those that are more remote. It is just 
the same with the different periods in a man's life; and yet 
often, in the one case no less than in the other, it is a mis- 
taken opinion. In the years of physical growth, when our 
powers of mind and our stores of knowledge are receiving 
daily additions, it becomes a habit for to-day to look down 
with contempt upon yesterday. The habit strikes root, and 
remains even after the intellectual powers have begun to de- 
cline — when to-day should rather look up with respect to 
yesterday. So it is that we often unduly depreciate the 
achievements as well as the judgments of our youth. 

This seems the place for making the general observation 
that, although in its main qualities a man's intellect or 
head as well as his character or heart, is innate, yet the 
former is by no means so unalterable in its nature as the 
latter. The fact is that the intellect is subject to very many 
transformations, which, as a rule do not fail to make their 
actual appearance; and this is so, partly because the intel- 
lect has a deep foundation in the physique, and partly 
because the material with which it deals is given in 
experience. And so, from a physical point of view, we 
find that if a man has any peculiar power, it first gradu - 
ally increases in strength until it reaches its acme after 
which it enters upon a path of slow decadence, until 
it ends in imbecility. But, on the other hand, we must not 
lose sight of the fact that the material which gives employ- 
ment to a man's powers and keeps them in activity — the 
subject matter of thought and knowledge, experience, in- 
tellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 197 

of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in them- 
selves a mass which continues to increase in size, until the 
time comes when weakness shows itself, and the man's 
powers suddenly fail. The way in which these two dis- 
tinguishable elements combine in the same nature — the one 
absolutely unalterable, and the other subject to change in 
two directions opposed to each other — explains the variety 
of mental attitude and the dissimilarity of value which 
attach to a man at different periods of life. 

The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying 
that the first forty years of life furnish the text, while the 
remaining thirty supply the commentary; and that without 
the commentary we are unable to understand aright the 
true sense and coherence of the text, together with the 
moral it contains and all the subtle application of which it 
admits. 

Toward the close of life, much the same thing happens 
as at the end of a bed masque — the masks are taken off. 
Then you can see who the people really are, with whom you 
have come into contact in your passage through the world. 
For by the end of life characters have come out in their 
true light, actions have borne fruit, achievements have been 
rightly appreciated, and all shams have fallen to pieces. 
For this, Time was in every case requisite. 

But the most curious fact is that it is also only toward 
the close of life that a man really recognizes and understands 
his own true self — the aims and objects he has followed in 
life, more especially the kind of relation in wiiich he has 
stood to other people and to the w T orld. It w r ill often hap- 
pen that as a result of this knowledge, a man will have to as- 
sign himself a lower place than he formerly thought was his 
due. But there are exceptions to this rule; and it will oc- 
casionally be the case that he will take a higher position 
than he had before. This will be owing to the fact that 
he had no adequate notion of the baseness of the world and 
that he set up a higher aim for himself than was followed 
by the rest of mankindc 

The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is 
made. 

It is customary to call youth the happy, and age the sad 
part of life. This would be true if it were the passions that 
made a man happy. Youth is swayed to and fro by them; 
and they give a great deal of pain and little pleasure. In 



198 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

age the passions cool and leave a man at rest, and then 
forthwith his mind takes a contemplative tone; the intellect 
is set free and attains the upper hand. And since, in itself, 
intellect is beyond the range of pain, a man feels happy 
just in so far as his intellect is the predominating part of 
him. 

It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, 
and that pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that 
the passions can never be a source of happiness, and that 
age is not the less to be envied on the ground that many 
pleasures are denied it. For every sort of pleasure is never 
anything more than the quietive of some need or longing; 
and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need 
ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man 
cannot go on eating after he has had his dinner, or fall 
asleep again after a good night's rest. 

So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there 
is much more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the 
beginning of the "Republic," that the prize should rather 
be given to old age, because then at last a man is freed from 
the animal passion which has hitherto never ceased to dis- 
quiet him. Nay, it may even be said that the countless and 
manifold humors which have their source in this passion, 
and the emotions that spring from it, produce a mild state 
of madness: and this lasts as long as the man is suhject to 
the spell of the impulse— this evil spirit, as it were, of which 
there is no riddance — so that he never really becomes a 
reasonable being until the passion is extinguished. 

There is no doubt that, in general, and apart from in 
dividual circumstances and particular dispositions, youth 
is marked by a certain melancholy and sadness, while 
genial sentiments attach to old age; and the reason of this 
is nothing but the fact that the young man is still under 
the service, nay, the forced labor, imposed by that evil 
spirit, which scarcely ever leaves him a moment to him- 
self. To this source may be traced, directly or indirectly, 
almost all and every ill that befalls or menaces mankind. 
The old man is genial and cheerful because, after long 
lying in the bonds of passion, he can now move about in 
freedom. 

Still, it should not be forgotten that, when this passion 
is extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and noth- 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 199 

ing remains but the hollow shell ; or, from another point 
of view, life then becomes like a comedy, which, begun 
by real actors, is continued and brought to an end by 
automata dressed in their clothes. 

However that may be, youth is the period of unrest, and 
age of repose; and from that very circumstance, the 
relative degree of pleasure belonging to each may be in- 
ferred. The child stretches out its little hand in the 
eager desire to seize all the pretty things that meet its 
sight, charmed by the world because all its senses are still 
so young and fresh. Much the same thing happens with 
the youth, and he displays greater energy in his quest. 
He, too, is charmed by all the pretty things and the 
many pleasing shapes that surround him; and forthwith 
his imagination conjures up pleasures which the world 
can never realize. So lie is filled with an ardent desire 
for he knows not what delights — robbing him of all rest 
and making happiness impossible. But when old age is 
reached, all this is over and done with, partly because the 
blood runs cooler and the sajises are no longer so easily 
allured; partly because experience has shown the true 
value of things and the futility of pleasure, whereby illu- 
sion has been gradually dispelled, and the strange fancies 
and prejudices which previously concealed or distorted a 
Jree and true view of the world, have been dissipated and 
put to flight; with the result that a man can now get a 
juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and 
also in a measure attain more or less insight into the 
^ullity of all things on this earth. 

It is this that gives almost every old man, no matter how 
ordinary his faculties may be, a certain tincture of wisdom, 
winch distinguishes him from the young. But the chief 
result of all this change is the peace of mind that ensues 
— a great element in happiness, and, in fact, the condition 
ftnd essence of it. While the young man fancies that 
there is a vast amount of good things in the world, if he 
could only come at them, the old man is steeped in the 
truth of the Preacher's words, that " all things are vanity " 
— knowing that, however gilded the shell, the nut i& 
hollow. 

In these later years, and not before, a man comes to a 
true appreciation of Horace's maxim: Nil admiraru 



200 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

He is directly and sincerely convinced of the vanity of 
everything and that all the glories of the world are as 
nothing, his illusions are gone. He is no more beset with 
the idea that there is any particular amount of happiness 
anywhere, in the palace or in the cottage, any more than 
he himself enjoys when he is free from bodily or mental 
pain. The worldly distinctions of great and small, high 
and low, exist for him no longer; and in this blissful state 
of mind the old man may look down with a smile upon all 
false notions. He is completely undeceived, and knows 
that, whatever may be done to adorn human life and deck 
it out in finery, its paltry character will soon show through 
the glitter of its surroundings; and that, paint and bejewel 
it as one may, it remains everywhere much the same — an 
existence which has no true value except in freedom from 
pain, and is never to be estimated by the presence of pleas- 
ure, let alone, then, of display.* 

Disillusion is the chief characteristic of old age; for by 
that time the fictions are gone which gave life its charm 
and spurred on the mind to activity; the splendors of 
the world have been proved null and vain ; its pomp, 
grandeur and magnificence are faded. A man has then 
found out that behind most of the things he wants, and 
most of the pleasures he longs for, there is very little after 
all ; and so he comes by degrees to see that our existence 
is all empty and void. It is only when he is seventy years 
old that he quite understands the first words of the 
Preacher; and this again explains why it is that old mei! 
are sometimes fretful and morose. 

It is often said that the common lot of o)d age is dis- 
ease and weariness of life. Disease is by no means essential 
to old age ; especially where a really long span of years 
is to be attained; for as life goes on, the conditions of 
health and disorder tend to increase — crescent vita, crescit 
sanitas et morbus. And as far as weariness or boredom is 
concerned, 1 have stated above why old age is aven less ex 
posed to that form of evil than youth. Nor is boredom 
by any means to be taken as a necessary accompaniment 
of that solitude, which, for reasons that do not require to 
be explained, old age certainly cannct escape; it is rather 
the fate that awaits those who have never known any other 

*Cf. Horace, "Epist." I. 12.. 1-4. 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 201 

pleasures but the gratification of the senses and the de- 
lights of society — who have left their minds unenlightened 
and their faculties unused. It is quite true that the in- 
tellectual faculties decline with the approach of old age; but 
where they were originally strong, there will always be 
enough left to combat the onslaught of boredom. And 
then again, as I have said, experience, knowledge, reflec- 
tion, and skill in dealing with men, combine to give an 
old man an increasingly accurate insight into the ways of 
the world; his judgment becomes keen and he attains a 
coherent view of life; his mental vision embraces a wider 
range. Constantly finding new uses for his stores of 
knowledge and adding to them at every opportunity, he 
maintains uninterrupted that inward process of self-educa- 
tion which gives employment and satisfaction to the mind, 
and thus forms the due reward of all its efforts. 

All this serves in some measure as a compensation for de- 
creased intellectual power. And besides, Time, as I have 
remarked, seems to go much more quickly when we are 
advanced in years; and this is in itself a preventive of bore- 
dom. There is no great harm in the fact that a man's 
bodily strength decreases in old age, unless, indeed, he re- 
quires it to make a living. To be poor when one is old, is 
a great misfortune. If a man is secure from that, and re- 
tains his health, old age may be a very passable time of 
life. Its chief necessity is to be comfortable and well off; 
and, in consequence, money is then prized more than ever, 
because it is a substitute for failing strength. Deserted by 
Venus, the old man likes to turn to Bacchus to make him 
merry. In the place of wanting to see things, to travel and 
•earn, comes the desire to speak and teach. It is a piece 
of good fortune if the old man retains some of his love of 
study or of music or of the theater — if, in general, he is still 
somewhat susceptible to the things about him; as is, indeed, 
the case with some people to a very late age. At that time 
of life, what a man has in himself, is of greater advan- 
tage to him than ever it was before. 

There can be no doubt that most people who have never 
been anything but dull and stupid, become more and more 
of automata as they grow old. They have always thought, 
said and done the same things as their neighbors: and noth- 
ing that happens now can change their disposition, or make 
them act otherwise. To talk to old people of this kind is 



202 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

like writing on the sand; if you produce any impression at 
all it is gone almost immediately; old age is here nothing but; 
the caput mortuum of life — all that is essential to manhood 
is gone. There are cases in which nature supplies a third 
set of teeth in old age, thereby apparently demonstrating 
the fact that that period of life is a second childhood. 

It is certainly a very melancholy thing that all a man's 
faculties tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate 
that increases in rapidity: but still this is a necessary nay a 
beneficial arrangement, as otherwise death, for which it is a 
preparation, would be too hard to bear. So the greatest 
boon that follows the attainment of extreme old age is eu- 
thanasia — an easy death, not ushered in by disease, and 
free from all pain and struggle.* For let a man live as 
long as he may, he is never conscious of any moment but 
the present, one and indivisible; and in those late years the 
mind loses more every day by sheer forgetfulness than ever 
it gains anew. 

The main difference between youth and age will always 
be that youth looks forward to life, and old age to death r 
and that while the one has a short past and a long future 
before it, the case is just the opposite with the other. It is 
quite true that when a man is old, to die is the only 
thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may expect 
to live; and the question arises, Which of the two fates is 
the more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on 
the whole, it is better to have behind one than before? Does 
not the Preacher say: "the day of death [is better] than 
the day of one's birth?" \ It is certainly a rash thing to 
wish for long life; % for, as the Spanish proverb has it, it 
means to see much evil — Quien larga vida vive mucho 
mal vide. 

*See "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," Bk. II. ch. 41, for a 
f urther description of this happy end to 4fe. 

f Ecclesiastes vii. 1. 

X The life of man cannot, strictly speaking be called either long 
or short, since it is the ultimate standard by which duration of time 
n regard to all other things is measured. 

In one of the Vedic "Upanishads" (Oupnekhat, II.) the "natural 
length" of human life is put down at one hundred years. And I be- 
lieve this to be right. I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is 
only people who exceed the age of ninety who attain euthanasia — who 
die, that is to say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass 



THE AGES OF LIFE. 203 

A man's individual career is not as astrology wishes to 
make out, to be predicted from observation of the planets; 
but the course of human life in general, as far as the various 
periods of it are concerned, may be likened to the succession 
of the planets; so that we may be said to pass under the in- 
fluence of each one of them in turn. 

At ten, Mercury is in the ascendant; and at that age, a 
man, like this planet, is characterized by extreme mobility 
within a narrow sphere, where trifles have a great effect 
upon him; but under the guidance of so crafty and eloquent 
a god, he easily makes great progress. Venus begins 
her sway during his twentieth year, and then a man is 
wholly given up to the love of women. At thirty, Mars 
comes to the front, and he is now all energy and strength — 
daring, pugnacious and arrogant 

When a man reaches the age of forty, he is under the 
vule of the four Asteroids: that is to say, his life has 
gained something in extension. He is frugal; in other 
words, by the help of Ceres, he favors what is useful; he 
has his own hearth, by the influence of Vesta; Pallas has 
taught him that which is necessary for him to know; and 
his wife — his Juno — rules as the mistress of his house. * 

away without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no 
pallor, but expire generally in a sitting attitude, and often after a 
meal — or I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To come to 
one's end before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in othei 
words, prematurely. 

Now the Old Testament (Psalms xc. 10) puts the limit of human life 
at seventy, and if it is very long, at eighty years; and what is more 
noticeable still, Herodotus (i. 32 and iii. 22) says the same thing. But 
this is wrong; and the error is due simply to a rough and superficial 
estimate of the results of daily experience. For if the natural length 
of life were from seventy to eighty years, people, would die 
about that time of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the case. If 
they die then, they die, like younger people, of disease; and disease is 
something abnormal. Therefore it is not natural to die at that age. 
It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred that people die 
of old age. die I mean, without suffering from any disease, or show- 
ing any special signs of their condition, such as a struggle, death 
rattle, convulsion, pallor — the absence of all which constitutes 
euthanasia. The natural length of human life is a hundred years 
and in assigning that limit the Upanishads are right once more. 

* The other asteroids which have been discovered since, are an in- 
novation, and I shall have nothing to do with them. My relation to 
them is that of the professors of philosophy to me— I ignore them, 
because they do not suit my book. 



204 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS. 

But at the age of fifty, Jupiter is the dominant influence. 
At that period a man has outlived most of his contempora- 
ries, and he can feel himself superior to the generation about 
him. He is still in the full enjoyment of his strength, and 
rich in experience and knowledge; and if he has any power 
and position of his own, he is endowed with authority over 
all who stand in his immediate surroundings. He is no 
more inclined to receive orders from others; he wants to 
take command himself. The work most suitable to him 
now is to guide and rule within his own sphere. This is 
the point where Jupiter culminates, and where the man of 
fifty years is at his best. 

Then comes Saturn, at about the age of sixty, a weight 
as of lead, dull and slow: 

" But old folks, many feign as they were dead , 
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead." * 

Last of all, Uranus; or, as the saying is, a man goes 
to heaven. 

I cannot find a place for Neptune, as this planet has 
been very thoughtlessly named; because I may not call it 
as it should be called — Eros. Otherwise I should point 
out how Beginning and End meet together, and how 
closely and intimately Eros is connected with Death ; how 
Orcus, or Amenthes, as the Egyptians called him,f is not 
only the receiver but the giver of all things— Xafifidvoov xal 
Sidovs. Death is the great reservoir of Life. Everything 
comes from Orcus ; everything that is alive now was onc& 
there. Could we but understand the great trick by which 
that is done, all would be clear! 

* " Romeo and Juliet," ii. 5. 

f Plutarch, " De Iside et Osiride," c. 29. 



RELIGION AND OTHER ESSAYS, 



RELIGION. 



A DIALOGUE. 

Demopheles. — Between ourselves, my dear fellow, x 
don't care about the way you sometimes have of exhibit- 
ing your talent for philosophy ; you make religion a sub- 
ject for sarcastic remarks, and even for open ridicule. 
Every one thinks his religion sacred, and therefore you 
'Might to respect it. 

Philalethes. — That doesn't follow ! I don't see why, 
3ecause other people are simpletons, I should have any 
regard for a pack of Jies. I respect truth everywhere, 
and so I can't respect what is opposed to it. My maxim 
is Vigeat Veritas et per eat mundus, like the lawyers' Fiat 
justitia et pereat mundus. Every profession ought to 
have an analogous device. 

Demopheles. — Then I suppose doctors should say Fiant 
pilules et pereat mundus — there wouldn't be much diffi- 
culty about that ! 

Philalethes. — Heaven forbid! You must take every- 
thing cum grano sails. 

Demopheles. — Exactly; that's why I want you to take 
religion cum. grano salis. I want you to see that you 
must meet the requirements of the people according to 
the measure of their comprehension. Where you have 
masses of people, of crude susceptibilities and clumsy in- 
telligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, 
religion provides the only means of proclaiming and mak- 
ing them feel the high import of life. For the average 
man takes an interest, primarily, in nothing but what 
will satisfy his physical needs and hankerings, and beyond 
this, give him a little amusement and pastime. Founders 
of religion and philosophers come into the world to rouse 
him from his stupor and point to the lofty meaning of ex* 



208 RELIGION 

istense; philosophers for the few, the emancipated, 
founders of religion for the many, for humanity at hirge. 
For, as your friend Plato has said, the multitude can't be 
philosophers, and you shouldn't forget that. Religion is 
the metaphysics of the masses; by all means let tliem 
keep it: let it therefore command external respect, for to 
discredit it is to take it away. Just as they have popular 
poetry, and the popular wisdom of proverbs, so they must 
have popular metaphysics too : for mankind absolutely 
needs an interpretation of life; aud this, again, must be 
suited to popular comprehension. Consequently, this 
interpretation is always an allegorical investiture of the 
truth: and in practical life and in its effects on the feel- 
ings, that is to say, as a rule of action and as a comfort 
and consolation in suffering and death, it accomplishes 
perhaps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if 
we possessed it. Don't take offense at its unkempt, 
grotesque and apparently absurd form: for with your 
education and learning, you have no idea of the round- 
about ways by which people in their crude state have to 
receive their knowledge of deep truths. The various 
religions are only various forms in which the truth, which 
taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped 
and realized by the masses; and truth becomes inseparable 
from these forms. Therefore, my dear sir, don't take it 
amiss if I say that to make a mockery of these forms is 
both shallow and unjust. 

Philalethes. — But isn't it every bit as shallow and un- 
just to demand that there shall be no other system of meta- 
physics but this one, cut out as it is to suit the requirements 
and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrines shall 
be the limit of human speculation, the standard of ah 
thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emanci- 
pated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirm- 
ing, strengthening, and explaining the metaphysics of the 
masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall 
remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud 
in order that their activity may not thwart the popular 
metaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which re- 
ligion sets up? Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance 
and delicate forberrance preached by what is intolerance 
and cruelty itself? Think of the heretical tribunals, in- 
quisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, 



A DIALOGUE. 20J 

Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all this to- 
day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philo- 
sophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling 
of the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely than 
by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a state 
monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every 
head in earliest youth so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, 
that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain 
indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy 
reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity 
for original thought arid unbiased judgment, which is weak 
enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it 
might be applied, forever paralyzed and ruined. 

Demopheles. — Which means, I suppose, that people 
have arrived at a conviction which they won't give up in 
order to embrace yours instead. 

Philalethes. — Ah! if it were only a conviction based on 
insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear, and 
the battle would be fought with equal weapons. But re- 
ligions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the result 
of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And 
as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood,' 
special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This 
has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking 
root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early child- 
hood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded 
with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnest- 
ness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same 
time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely 
passed over, or touched upon only to indicate 
that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the 
resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, 
that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will 
be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own existence. 
Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind 
to ask himself seriously and earnestly is that true? To 
call such as can do it strong minds, esprits forts, is a de- 
scription apter than is generally supposed. But for the 
ordinary mind there is nothing so absurd or revolting but 
what, if inculcated in that way, the strongest belief in it 
will strike root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic 
or infidel were essential to the future salvation of his soul, 
almost every one would make it the chief event of his life, 



210 BELIQION, 

and in dying would draw consolation and strength from 
the remembrance that he had succeeded. As a matter of 
fact, almost every Spaniard in days gone by used to look 
upon an auto da fe as the most pious of all acts and one 
most agreeable to God. A parallel to this may be found 
in the way in which the Thugs (a religious sect in India, 
suppressed a short time ago by the English, who executed 
numbers of them) express their sense of religion and their 
veneration for the goddess Kali; they take every oppor- 
tunity of murdering their friends and traveling compan- 
ions, with the object of getting possession of their goods, 
and in the serious conviction that they are thereby doing a 
praiseworthy action, conducive to their eternal welfare.* 
The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is 
such as to stifle conscience, compassion and finally every 
feeling of humanity. But if you want to see with your 
own eyes and close at hand what timely inoculation of 
belief will accomplish, look at the English. Here is a 
nation favored before all others by nature; endowed, more 
than all others, with discernment, intelligence, power of 
judgment, strength of character; look at them, abased 
and made ridiculous, beyond all others, by their stupid 
ecclesiastical superstition, which appears among their other 
abilities like a fixed idea or monomania; jor this they 
have to thank the circumstance that education is in the 
hands of the clergy, whose endeavor it is to impress all the 
articles of belief, at the earliest age, in a way that amounts 
to a kind of paralysis of the brain; this in its turn ex- 
presses itself all their life in an idiotic bigotry, which 
makes otherwise most sensible and intelligent people among 
them degrade themselves so that one can't make head or 
tail of them. If you consider how essential to such a 
masterpiece is inoculation in the tender age of childhood 
the missionary system appears no longer only as the acme 
of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but 
l^o as an absurdity, if it doesn't confine itself to nations, 
which are still in their infancy, like Kaffirs, Hottentots, 
South Sea Islanders, etc. Among these races it is success- 
ful; but in India the Brahmans treat the discourses of the 
missionaries with contemptuous smiles of approbation, or 

* Cf. Illustrations of the history and practice of the Thugs, Lou- 
■doo, 1837; also the Edinburgh Review, Qct.-Jan., 1886-7. 



A DIALOGUE. 211 

simply shrug their shoulders. And one may say generally 
that the proselytizing efforts of the missionaries in India, 
in spite of the most advantageous facilities, are, as a rule, 
a failure. An authentic report in Vol. XXI. of the 
Asiatic Journal (1826) states that after so many years of 
missionary activity not more than three hundred living 
converts were to be found in the whole of India, where the 
population of the English possessions alone comes to one hun- 
dred and fifteen millions; and at the same time it is admitted 
that the Christian converts are distinguished for their ex- 
treme immorality. Three hundred venal and bribed souls 
out of so many millions! There is no evidence that things 
have gone better with Christianity in India since then, in 
spite of the fact that the missionaries are now trying, con- 
trary to stipulation and in schools exclusively designed for 
secular English instruction, to work upon the children's 
minds as they please, in order to smuggle in Christianity; 
against which the Hindoos are most jealously on their 
guard. As I have said, childhood is' the time to sow the 
seeds of belief, and not manhood; more especially where 
an earlier faith has taken root. An acquired conviction 
such as is feigned by adults is, as a rule, only the mask for 
some kind of personal interest. And it is the feeling that 
this is almost bound to be the case which makes a man 
who has changed his religion in mature years an object of 
contempt to most people everywhere; who thus show that 
they look upon religion, not as a matter of reasoned con- 
viction, but merely as a belief inoculated in childhood, 
before any test can be applied. And that they are right 
in their view of religion is also obvious from the way in 
which not only the masses, who are blindly credulous, but 
also the clergy of every religion, who, as such, have faith- 
fully and zealously studied its sources, foundations, dogmas 
and disputed points, cleave as a body to the religion of 
their particular country; consequently for a minister of 
one religion or confession to go over to another is the 
rarest thing in the world. The Catholic clergy, for ex- 
ample, are fully convinced of the truth of all the tenets of 
their church, and so are the Protestant clergy of theirs, 
and both defend the principles of their creeds with like 
zeal. And yet the conviction is governed merely by the 
country native to each; to the South German ecclesiastic 
the truth of the Catholic dogma is quite obvious, to the 



212 RELIGION. 

North German, the Protestant. If, then, these convic- 
tions are based on objective reasons, the reasons must be 
climatic, and thrive, like plants, some only here, some 
only there. The convictions of those who are thus locally 
convinced are taken on trust and believed by the masses 
everywhere. 

Demopheles. — Well, no harm is done, and it doesn't 
make any real difference. As a fact, Protestantism is 
more suited to the north, Catholicism to the south. 

Philalethes. — So it seems. Still I take a higher 
standpoint, and keep in view a more important object, the 
progress, namely, of the knowledge of truth among man- 
kind. And from this point of view, it is a terrible thing 
that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are in- 
culcated in him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he 
may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of 
thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, 
which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and 
accordingly determine forever, and, if they are false, distort 
forever, the point of view from which our knowledge 
starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions 
touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at 
every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly 
adulterated by them. Evidence of this is afforded by 
every literature; the most striking by that of the Middle 
Age, but in a too considerable degree by that of the fif- 
teenth and sixteenth centuries. Look at even the first 
minds of all those epochs; how paralyzed they are by false 
fundamental positions like these; how, more especially, 
all insight into the true constitution and working of Nature 
is, as it were, blocked up. During the whole of the Chris- 
tian period Theism presents a solid barrier to all intellect- 
ual effort, and chiefly to philosophy, arresting or stunting 
all progress. For the scientific men of these ages God, 
devil, angels, demons hid the whole of nature; no inquiry 
was followed to the end, nothing ever thoroughly examined; 
everything which went beyond the most obvious causa] 
nexus was immediately set down to those personalities. 
" It was at once explained by a reference to God, angels 
or demons," as Pomponatius expressed himself when the 
matter was being discussed, " and philosophers at any 
rate have nothing analogous. " There is, to be sure, a 
suspicion of irony in this statement of Pomponatius, as his 



A DIALOGUE. 213 

perfidy in other matters is known; still, he is only giving 
expression to the general way of thinking of his age. 
And if, on the other hand, any one possessed the rare 
quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the 
bonds, his writings and he himself with them were burned; 
as happened to Bruno and Vanini, How completely an 
ordinary mind is paralyzed by that early preparation in 
metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its most 
ridiculous side whenever it undertakes to criticise the 
doctrines of an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary 
man are generally found to be directed to a careful ex- 
hibition of the incongruity of its dogmas with those of his 
own belief: he is at great pains to show that not only do 
they not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing; 
and with that he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has 
demonstrated the falsehood of the alien creed. He really 
never dreams of putting the question which of the two 
may be right; his own articles of belief he looks upon as 
a priori true and certain principles. 

Demopheles. — So that's your higher point of view! 
I assure you there is a higher still. " First live, then 
philosophize" is a maxim of more comprehensive import 
than appears at first sight. The first thing to do is to 
control the raw and evil dispositions of the masses, so as 
to keep them from pushing injustice to extremes, and 
from committing cruel, violent and disgraceful acts. If 
you were to wait until they had recognized and grasped the 
truth, you would undoubtedly come too late; and truth, 
supposing that it had been found, would surpass their 
powers of comprehension. In any case an allegorical in- 
vestiture of it, a parable or myth, is all that would be of 
any service to them. As Kant said, there must be a public 
standard of Right and Virtue; it must always flutter high 
overhead. It is a matter of indifference what heraldic 
figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify what u 
meant. Such an allegorical representation of truth is 
always and everywhere, for humanity at large, a serviceable 
substitute for a truth to which it can never attain, for a 
philosophy which it can nevs: grasp; let alone the fact 
that it is daily changing its shape, and has in no form as 
yet met with general acceptance. Practical aims, then. 
my good Philalethes, are .n every respect suoerior to theo- 
retical. 



214 RELIGION. 

Philalethes. — What you say is very like the ancient 
advice of Timaeus of Locrus, the Pythagorean, "stop the 
mind with falsehood if you can't speed it with truth." I 
almost suspect that your plan is the one which is so much 
in vogue just now, that you want to impress upon us 
that 

" The hour is nigh 
When we may feast in quiet." 

/ou recommend us, in fact, to take timely precautions so 
that the waves of the discontented raging masses mayn't 
disturb us at table. But the whole point of view is as 
false as it is nowadays popular and commended; and so I 
make haste to enter a protest against it. It is false that 
state, justice, law cannot be upheld without the assistance 
of religion and its dogmas; and that justice and public 
order need religion as a necessary complement, if legisla- 
tive enactments are to be carried out. It is false, were it 
repeated a hundred times! An effective and striking 
argument to the contrary is afforded by the ancients, es- 
pecially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of what wc 
understand by religion. They had no sacred documents, 
no dogma to be learned and its acceptance furthered by 
every one, its principles to be inculcated early on the young. 
Just as little was moral doctrine preached by the ministers 
of religion, nor did the priests trouble themselves about 
morality or about what the people did or left undone. 
Not at all. The duty of the priests was confined to tem- 
ple-ceremonial, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, 
lustrations and the like, the object of which was anything 
but the moral improvement of the individual. What was 
called religion consisted, more especially in the cities, in 
giving temples here and there to some of the gods of the 
greater tribes, in which the worship described was carried 
on as a state matter, and was consequently, in fact, an 
affair of police. No one, except the functionaries per- 
forming, was in any way compelled to attend, or even to 
believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace 
of any obligation to believe in any particular dogma. 
Merely in the case of an open denial of the existence of 
the gods, or any other reviling of them, a penalty was im- 
posed, and that on account of the insult offered to the 
state, which served those gods: bevond this it was free to 



A DIALOGUE. 215 

every one to think of them what he pleased. If any one 
wanted to gain the favor of those gods privately, by prayer 
or sacrifice, it was open to him to do so at his own expense 
and at his own risk; if he didn't do it, no one made any 
objection, least of all the state. In the case of the Romans 
every one had his own Lares and Penates at home: these 
were, however, in reality, only the venerated busts of an- 
cestors. Of the immortality of the soul and a life beyond 
the grave, the ancients had no firm, clear or, least of all, 
dogmatically fixed idea, but very loose, fluctuating, in- 
definite and problematical notions, every one in his own 
way: and the ideas about the gods were just as varying, 
individual and vague. There was therefore really no 
religion, in our sense of the word, among the ancients. 
But did anarchy and lawlessness prevail among them on 
that account? Is not law and civil order, rather, so much 
their work, that it still forms the foundation of our own? 
Was there not complete protection for property, even 
though it consisted for the most part of slaves? And did 
not this state of things last for more than a thousand years? 
So that I can't recognize, I must even protest against the 
practical aims and the necessity of religion in the sense 
indicated by you, and so popular nowadays, that is, aa 
an indispensable foundation of all legislative arrange- 
ments. For, if you take that point of view, the pure and 
sacred endeavor after truth will, to say the least, appear 
quixotic, and even criminal, if it ventures, in its feeling of 
justice, to denounce the authoritative creed as a usurper 
who has taken possession of the throne of truth and main- 
tained his position by keeping up the deception. 

Demopheles. — But religion is not opposed to truth; 
it itself teaches truth. And as the range of its activity is 
not a narrow lecture room, but the world and humanity 
at large, religion must conform to the requirements and 
comprehension of an audience so numerous and so mixed. 
Religion must not let truth appear in its naked form; or, 
to use a medical simile, it must not exhibit it pure, but must 
employ a mythical vehicle, a medium, as it weie. You 
can also compare truth in this respect to certain chemical 
stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, but which for 
medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmission, 
must be bound to a stable, solid base, because they would 
otherwise volatilize. Chlorine gas, for example, is for a]] 



216 RELIGION. 

purposes applied onty in the form of chlorides. But if 
truth, pure, abstract and free from all mythical alloy, is 
always to remain unattainable, even by philosophers, it 
might be compared to fluorine, which cannot even be 
isolated, but must always appear in combination with other 
elements. Or, to take a less scientific simile, truth, which 
is inexpressible except by means of myth and allegory, is 
like water, which can be carried about only in vessels: a 
philosopher who insists on obtaining it pure is like a man 
who breaks the jug in order to get the water by itself 
This is, perhaps, an exact analogy. At any rate, religion 
is truth allegorically and mythically expressed, and so 
rendered attainable and digestible by mankind in general. 
Mankind couldn't possibly take it pure and unmixed, just 
as we can't breathe pure oxygen; we require an addition 
of four times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the 
profound meaning, the high aim of life, can only be un- 
folded and presented to the masses symbolically, because 
they are incapable of grasping it in its true signification. 
Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like the Eleu- 
sinian mysteries, for the few, the elite. 

Philalethes. — I understand. It comes, in short, to 
truth, wearing the garment of falsehood. But in doing so 
it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is 
put into the hands of those who are authorized to employ 
falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as you say, 
I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater 
than any advantage the truth could ever produce. Of 
course, if the allegory were admitted to be such, I should 
raise no objection; but with the admission it would rob 
itself of all respect, and consequently, of all utility. The 
allegory must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the 
proper sense of the word, and maintain the claim; while, 
at the most, it is true only in an allegorical sense. Here 
lies the irreparable mischief, the permanent evil; and this 
is why religion has always been and will always be in con- 
flict with the noble endeavor after pure truth. 

Demopheles. — Oh no! that danger is guarded against. 
If religion mayn't exactly confess its allegorical nature, it 
gives sufficient indication of it. 

Philalethes. — How so? 

Demopheles. — In its mysteries. "Mystery," is in 
reality only a technical theological term for religious 



A VIALOOUE. 21? 

allegory. All religions have their mysteries. Properly 
speaking, a mystery is a dogma which is plainly absurd, 
but which, nevertheless, conceals in itself a lofty truth, 
and one which by itself would be completely incompre- 
hensible to the ordinary understanding of the raw multi- 
tude. The multitude accepts it in this disguise on trust, 
and believes it, without being led astray by the absurdity 
of it, which even to its intelligence is obvious; and in this 
way it participates in the kernel of the matter so far as it 
is possible for it to do so. To explain what I mean, I may 
add that even in philosophy an attempt has been made to 
make use of a mystery. Pascal, for example, who was at 
once a pietist, a mathematician, and a philosopher, says 
in this threefold capacity: " God is everywhere center and 
nowhere periphery." Malebranche has also the just re- 
mark: " Liberty is a mystery." One could go a step fur- 
ther and maintain that in religions everything is mystery. 
For to impart truth, in the proper sense of the word, to 
the multitude in its raw state is absolutely impossible; all 
that can fall to its lot is to be enlightened by a mytho- 
logical reflection of it. Naked truth is out of place be- 
fore the eyes of the profane vulgar; it can only make 
its appearance thickly veiled. Hence, it is unreasonable 
to require of a religion that it shall be true in the proper 
sense of the word; and this, I may observe in passing, is 
nowadays the absurd contention of Rationalists and 
Supernaturalists alike. Both start from the position that 
religion must be the real truth; and while the former de- 
monstrate that it is not the truth, the latter obstinately 
maintain that it is; or rather, the former dress up and 
arrange the allegorical element in such a way, that, in the 
propei' sense of the word, it could be true, but would be, 
in that case, a platitude; while the latter wish to main- 
tain that it is true in the proper sense of the word, with- 
out any further dressing; a belief, which, as we ought to 
know, is only to be enforced by inquisitions and the stake. 
As a fact, however, myth and allegory really form the 
proper element of religion; and under this indispensable 
condition, which is imposed by the intellectual limitation 
of the multitude, religion provides a sufficient satisfaction 
for those metaphysical requirements of mankind which are 
indestructible. It takes the place of that pure philosophi- 
cal truth which is infinitely difficult and perhaps never 
attainable. 



.418 RELIGION. 

Philalethes. — Ah! just as a wooden leg takes the 
place of a natural one; it supplies what is lacking, barely 
does duty for it, claims to be regarded as a natural leg. 
and is more or less artfully put together. The only 
difference is that, while a natural leg as a rule preceded 
the wooden one, religion has everywhere got the start of 
philosophy. 

Demopheles. — That may be, but still for a man who 
hasn't a natural leg, a wooden one is of great service. 
You must bear in mind that the metaphysical needs of 
mankind absolutely require satisfaction, because the 
horizon of man's thoughts must have a back-ground and 
not remain unbounded. Man has, as a rule, no faculty 
for weighing reasons and discriminating between what ia 
false and what is true; and besides, the labor which nature 
and the needs of nature impose upon him, leaves him no 
time for such inquiries, or for the education which they 
presuppose. In his case, therefore, it is no use talking of 
a reasoned conviction; he has to fall back on belief and 
authority. If a really true philosophy were to take the 
place of religion, nine-tenths at least of mankind would 
have to receive it on authority; that is to say, it too would 
be a matter of faith, for Plato's dictum, that the multi- 
tude can't be philosophers, will always remain true. 
Authority, however, is an affair of time and circumstance 
alone, and so it can't be bestowed on that which has only 
reason in its favor; it must accordingly be allowed to 
nothing but what has acquired it in the course of history, 
even if it is only an allegorical representation of truth. 
Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first 
of all to those elements in the human constitution which 
are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man 
feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existence which 
forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the con- 
sciousness that behind the physical in the world there is a 
metaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of 
constant change. Then it appeals to the will, to the fears 
and hopes of mortal beings living in constant struggle; for 
whom, accordingly, religion creates gods and demons 
whom they can cry to, appease and win over. Finally, it 
appeals to that moral consciousness which is undeniably 
present in man, lends to it that corroboration and support 
without which it would, not easily maintain itself in the 



A DIALOG VE. 219 

struggle against so many temptations. It is just from this 
side that religion affords an inexhaustible source of con 
isolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life, a 
comfort which does not leave men in death, but rather 
then only unfolds its full efficacy. So religion may be 
compared to one who takes a blind man by the hand and 
leads him, because he is unable to see for himself, whos< 
concern it is to reach his destination, not to look at every- 
thing by the way. 

Philalethes. — That is certainly the strong point of 
religion. If it is a fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is un- 
deniable. But this makes priests something between de- 
ceivers and teachers of morality: they daren't teach the 
real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if 
they knew it, which is not the case. A true philosophy, 
then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I 
mean, in the proper understanding of the word, not merely 
in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have de- 
scribed; a sense in which ail religions would be true, only 
in various degrees. It is quite in keeping with the in- 
extricable mixture of weal and woe, honesty and deceit, 
good and evil, nobility and baseness, which is the average 
characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most im- 
portant, the most lofty the most sacred truths can make 
their appearance only in combination with a lie, can even 
borrow strength from a lie as from something that works 
more powerfully on mankind: and, as revelation, must be 
ushered in by a lie. This might indeed be regarded as 
the cachet of the moral world. However, we won't give 
up the hope that mankind will eventually reach a point of 
maturity and education at which it can on the one side 
produce, and on the other receive, the true philosophy. 
Simplex sigillum vert: the naked truth must be so simple 
and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true 
form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without 
disguising it in the form of religion. 

Demopheles. — You've no notion how stupid most 
people are. 

Philalethes. — I am only expressing a hope which J 
can't give up. If it were fulfilled, truth in its simple anc 
intelligible form would of course drive religion from tin 
place it has so long occupied as its representative, and by 
stoat very means kept open for it The time would have 



220 RELIGION. 

come when religion would have carried out her object and 
completed her coarse: the race she had brought to years 
of discretion she could dismiss, and herself depart in 
peace: that would be the euthanasia of religion. But as 
long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, one of 
fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you 
will bear her favor or ill-will. Eeligion must be regarded 
as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful im- 
becility of the great majority of mankind, incapable of 
grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its pressing 
need, something to take its place. 

Demopheles. — Really, one would think that you phi- 
losophers had truth in a cupboard, and that all you had to 
do was to go and get it! 

Philalethes. — Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly 
owing to the pressure put upon philosophy by religion at 
all times and in all places. People have tried to make the 
expression and communication of truth, even the contem- 
plation and discovery of it, impossible, by putting children, 
in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to be 
manipulated; to have the lines in which their funda- 
mental thoughts are henceforth to run, laid down with such 
firmness as, in essential matters, to be fixed and determined 
for this whole life. When I take up the writings even of 
the best intellects of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies (more especially if I have been engaged in oriental 
studies), I am sometimes shocked to see how they are 
paralyzed and hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas. 
How can any one think out the true philosophy when he 
r, prepared like this? 

Demopheles. — Even if the true philosophy were to be dis- 
covered, religion wouldn't disappear from the world, as 
you seem to think. There can't be one system of meta 
physics for everybody; that's rendered impossible by the 
natural differences of intellectual power between man anu. 
man, and the differences, too, which education makes. 
It is a necessity for the great majority of mankind to en- 
gage in that severe bodily labor which cannot be dispensed 
with if the ceaseless requirements of the whole race are 
to be satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no 
time for education, for learning, for contemplation; but 
by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism between 
muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so muct 



A DIALOGUE. 221 

exhausting bodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awk- 
ward and consequently incapable of grasping any other 
than quite simple situations. At least nine-tenths of the 
human race falls under this category. But still people 
require a system of metaphysics, that is, an apcount of the 
world and our existence, because such an account belongs 
to the most natural needs of mankind, they require a 
popular system; and to be popular it must combine many 
rare qualities. It must be easily understood, and at the 
same time possess, on the proper points, a certain amount 
of obscurity, even of impenetrability: then a correct and 
satisfactory system of morality must be bound up with its 
dogmas; above all, it must afford inexhaustible consolation 
in suffering and death; the consequence of all this is, 
that it can only be true in an allegorical and not in a reaj 
sense. Further, it must have the support of an authority 
which is impressive by its great age, by being universally 
recognized, by its documents, their tone and utterances; 
qualities which are so extremely difficult to combine that 
many a man wouldn't be so ready, if he considered the 
matter, to help to undermine a religion, but would reflect 
that what he is attacking is a people's most sacred treas- 
ure. If you want to form an opinion on religion, you 
should always bear in mind the character of the great 
multitude for which it is destined, and form a picture to 
yourself of its complete inferiority, moral and intellectual. 
It is incredible how far this inferiority goes, and how 
perseveringly a spark of truth will glimmer on even under 
the crudest covering of monstrous fable or grotesque cere- 
mony, clinging indestructibly, like the odor of musk, to 
every tiling that has once come into contact with it. In 
illustration of this, consider the profound wisdom of the 
Upanishads, and then look at the mad idolatry in the 
India of to-day, with its pilgrimages, processions and 
festivities, or at the insane and ridiculous goings-on of the 
Saniassi. Still one can't deny that in all this insanity and 
nonsense there lies some obscure purpose which accords 
with, or is a reflection of the profound wisdom I men- 
tioned. But for the brute multitude, it has to be dressed 
up in this form. In such a contrast as this we have the two 
poles of humanity, the wisdom of the individual and the 
bestiality of the many, both of which find their point of 
contact in the moral spliere. That saving from the 



222 RELIGION. 

Kurral must occur to everybody, " Base people look like 
men, but I have never seen their exact counterpart. *' 
The man of education may, all the same, interpret reli- 
gion to himself cum grano sails; the man of learning, the 
contemplative spirit may secretly exchange it for a phi- 
losophy. But here again one philosophy wouldn't suit 
-everybody; by the laws of affinity every system would draw 
\o itself that public to whose education and capacities it 
was most suited. So there is always an inferior meta- 
physical system of the schools for the educated multitude, 
and a higher one for the elite. Kant's lofty doctrine, for 
instance, had to be degraded to the level of the schools 
and ruined by such men as Fries, Krug and Salat. In 
short, here, if anywhere, Goethe's maxim is true, " One 
does not suit all." Pure faith in revelation and pure meta- 
physics are for the two extremes, and for the intermediate 
steps mutual modifications of both in innumerable com- 
binations and gradations. And this is rendered neces- 
sary by the immeasurable differences which nature and 
education have placed between man and man. 

Philalethes. — The view you take reminds mc seriously 
of the mysteries of the ancients, whicn you mentioned 
just now. Their fundamental purpose seems to have 
been to remedy the evil arising from the differences of 
intellectual capacity and education. The plan was out of 
the great multitude utterly impervious to unveiled truth, 
to select certain persons who might have it revealed to 
them up to a given point; out of these, again to choose 
others to whom more would be revealed, as being able to 
grasp more; and so on up to the Epopts. These grades 
corresponded to the little, greater and greatest mysteries. 
The arrangement was founded on a correct estimate of the 
intellectual inequality of mankind. 

Demopheles. — To some extent the education in our 
lower, middle and high schools corresponds to the varying 
grades of initiation into the mysteries. 

Philalethes. — In a very approximate way: and then 
only in so far as subjects of higher knowledge are written 
about exclusively in Latin. But since that has ceased to 
be the case, all the mysteries are profaned. 

Demopheles. — However that may be, I wanted to re- 
mind you that you should look at religion more from the 
practical than from the theoretical side. Personified rneta- 



A DIALOGUE. 223 

physics may be the enemy of religion, but all the same 
personified morality will be its friend. Perhaps the 
metaphysical element in all religions is false, but the 
moral element in all : s true. This might perhaps be pre- 
sumed from the fact they all disagree in their meta- 
physics, but are in accord as regards morality. 

Philalethes. — Which is an illustration of the rule of 
logic that false premises may be given a true conclusion. 

Demopheles. — Let me hold you to your conclusion 
let me remind you that religion lias two sides. If it can't 
stand when looked at from its theoretical, that is, its 
intellectual side; on the other hand, from the moral side, 
it proves itself the only means of guiding, controlling and 
mollifying those races of animals endowed with reason, 
whose kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship 
with the tiger. But at the same time religion is, as a rule, 
a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical neces- 
sities. You don't seem to me to possess a proper idea of 
the difference, wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf 
between your man of learning and enlightenment, ac- 
customed to the process of thinking, and the heavy, 
clumsy, dull and sluggish consciousness of humanity's 
beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all 
taken the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and 
cannot be put in motion in any other; whose muscular 
strength is so exclusively brought into play that the nerv- 
ous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a very low 
ebb. People like that must have something tangible which 
they can lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway 
of their life, some sort of beautiful fable, by means of 
which things can be imparted to them which their crude 
intelligence can entertain only in picture and parable. 
Profound explanations and fine distinctions are thrown 
away upon them. If you conceive religiou in this light, 
and recollect that its aims are above all practical, and only 
in a subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you 
as something worthy of the highest respect. 

Philalethes. — A respect which will finally rest upon 
the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't 
feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Reli- 
gion may be an excellent means of taming and training the 
perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: 
in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even 



324 RELIGION, 

though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system 
of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of 
inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the 
oath is truth: I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and 
whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth! 
H I see religion on the wrong side 

Demopheles. — But you won't. Religion isn't a decep- 
tion: it is true and the most important of all truths. 
Because its doctrines are, as I have said, of such a lofty 
kind that the multitude can't grasp them without an 
intermediary; because, I say, its light would blind the 
ordinary eye, it comes forward wrapped in the veil of allegory 
and teaches, not indeed what is exactly true in itself, but 
what is true in respect of the lofty meaning contained in 
it; and, understood in this way, religion is the truth. 

Philalethes. — It would be all right if religion were 
only at liberty to be true in a merely allegorical sense. 
But its contention is that it is downright true in the 
proper sense of the word. Herein lies the deception, and 
it is here that the friend of truth must take up a hostile 
position. 

Demopheles. — This deception is a sine qua non. If 
religion were to admit that it was only the allegorical 
meaning in its doctrines which was true, it would rob it- 
self of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment as this would 
destroy its invaluable influence on the hearts and morals 
of mankind. Instead of insisting on that with pedantic 
obstinacy, look at its great achievements in the practical 
sphere, its furtherance of good and kindly feelings, its 
guidance in conduct, the support and consolation it gives 
to suffering humanity in life and death. How much you 
. ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit 
' in the eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it, 
something which is an inexhaustible source of consolation 
and tranquillity, something which, in its hard lot, it needs 
so much, even more than we do. On that score alone, 
religion should be free from attack. 

Philalethes. — With that kind of argument you could 
have driven Luther from the field, when he attacked the 
sale of indulgences. How 7 many a man got consolation 
from the letters of indulgence, a consolation which noth- 
ing else could give, a complete tranquillity: so that he 
joyfully departed with the fullest confidence in the packet 



A DIALOGUE. 225 

of them which he held in his hand at the hour of death, 
convinced that they were so many cards of admission to 
all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of con- 
solation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed 
by the Damocles-sword of illusion? The truth, my dear 
sir, is the only safe thing; the truth alone remains stead- 
iast and trusty; it is the only solid consolation; it is the 
ndestrnctible diamond. 

Demoppieles. — Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, 
ready to favor us with it on demand. All you've got are 
metaphysical systems, in which nothing is certain but the 
headaches they cost. Before you take anything away, 
you must have something better to put in its place. 

Philalethes. — That's what you keep on saying. To 
free a man from error is to give, not to take away. 
Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always 
does harm: sooner or later it will bring mischief to the 
man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; 
confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave every 
one to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps 
they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one 
another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. 
The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foun- 
dation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and 
capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, 
or even in their own persons carry the history of philos- 
ophy a step further. 

Demopheles. — That'll be a pretty business! A whole 
nation of raw metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually 
coming to blows with one another! 

Philalethes. — Well, well, a few blows here and there 
are the sauce of life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable 
-vil, compared with such things as priestly dominion, plun- 
lering of the laity, persecution of heretics, courts of in- 
quisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of St. 
Bartholomew. These have been the results of popular 
metaphysics imposed from without; so I stick to the old 
saying that you can't get grapes from thistles, nor expect 
good to come from a pack of lies. 

Demopheles. — How often must I repeat that religion 
is anything but a pack of lies? It is the truth itself, only 
in a mythical, allegorical vesture. But when you spoke of 
your plan of every one beino - his own founder of religion- 



226 RELIGION. 

I wanted to say that a particularism like this is totally 
opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy 
all social order. Man is a metaphysical animal — that is to 
say, he has paramount metaphysical necessities; accord- 
ingly, he conceives life above all in its metaphysical 
significance and wishes to bring everything into line with 
that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in 
view of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the 
fundamentals of metaphysics is the chief thing; because a 
genuine and lasting bond of union is only possible among 
those who are of one opinion on these points. As a result 
of this, the main point of likeness and of contrast between 
nations is rather religion than government, or even 
language; and so the fabric of society, the state, will stand 
firm only when founded on a system of metaphysics which 
is acknowledged by all. This, of course, can only be a 
popular system — that is, a religion: it becomes part and 
parcel of the constitution of the state, of all the public 
manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn 
acts of individuals. This was the case in ancient India, 
among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans: 
it is still the case in the Brahman, Buddhist and Moham- 
medan nations. In China there are three faiths, it 
is true, of which the most prevalent — Buddhism — is pre- 
cisely the one which is not protected by the state: still, 
there is a saying in China, universally acknowledged, and 
of daily application, that " the three faiths are only one/* 
— that is to say, they agree in essentials. The emperor 
confesses all three together at the same time. And Europe 
is the union of Christian states: Christianity is the basis 
of every one of the members, and the common bond of all. 
Hence Turkey, though geographically in Europe, is not 
properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In the same 
way, theEuropean princes hold their place " by the grace of 
God:" and the pope is the vicegerent of God. Accord- 
ingly, as his throne was the highest, he used to wish all 
thrones to be regarded as held in fee from him. In the 
same way, too, archbishops and bishops, as such, possessed 
temporal power; and in England they still have seats and 
votes in the Upper House. Protestant princes, as such, 
are heads of their churches: in England, a few years ago, 
this was a girl eighteen years old. By the revolt from the 
pope, the Reformation shattered the European fabric, and 



A DIALOGUE. 227 

in a special degree dissolved the true unity of Germany by de 
stroying its common religious faith. This union, whicfl 
liad practically come to an end, had, accordiugly, to be 
restored later on by artificial and purely political means. 
You see, then, how closely connected a common faith is 
with the social order and the constitution of every state. 
Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the con 
stitution, the foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, 
which could hardly hold together at all if religion did not 
lend weight to the authority of government and the dignity 
of the ruler. 

Philalethes. — Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of 
bogey to frighten grown-up children to bed with, if noth- 
ing else avails: that's why they attach so much importance 
to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing, recommend 
our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twice 
every year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of 
Samuel, that they may be constantly reminded of what it 
means to prop the throne on the altar. Besides, since the 
stake, that ultima ratio theologorum, has gone out of 
fashion, this method of government has lost its efficacy. 
For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they 
shine only when it's dark. A certain amount of general 
ignorance is the condition of all religions, the element in 
which alone they can exist. And as soon as astronomy, 
natural science, geology, history, the knowledge of 
countries and peoples have spread their light broadcast, 
and philosophy finally is permitted to say a word, every 
faith founded on miracles and revelation must disappear; 
and philosophy takes its place. In Europe the day of 
knowledge and science dawned toward the end of the 
fifteenth century with the appearance of the Renaissance 
Platonists: its sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries so rich in results, and scattered the mists 
of the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to 
disappear in the same proportion; and so in the eight- 
eenth century English and French philosophers were able 
to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, 
rmder Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took 
away from religious belief the support it had previously 
enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated the handmaid 
of theology, and in attacking the question with German 
thoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest, instead of a 



228 RELIGION. 

frivolous tone. The consequence of this is that we see 
Christianity undermined in the nineteenth century, a 
serious faith in it almost completely gone; we see it fight- 
ing even for bare existence, while anxious princes try to 
set it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a drug 
on a dying patient, In this connection there is passage in 
Condorcet's " Des Progres de V esprit humain" which 
looks as if written as a warning to our age: " the religious 
zeal shown by philosophers and great men was only a 
political devotion; and every religion which allows itself 
to be defended as a belief that may usefully be left to the 
people, can only hope for an agony more or less pro- 
longed." In the whole course of the events which I have 
indicated, you may always observe that faith and knowl- 
edge are related as the two scales of a balance; when the 
one goes up, the other goes down. 3o sensitive is the 
balance that it indicates momentary influences. When, 
for instance, at the beginning of this century, those in- 
roads of French robbers under the leadership of Buona- 
parte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving 
them out and punishing them, had brought about a tem- 
porary neglect of science, and consequently a certain 
decline in the general increase of knowledge, the Church 
immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began 
to show fresh signs of life: which, to be sure, in keeping 
with frhe times, was partly poetical in its nature. On the 
other hand, in the more than thirty years of peace which 
followed, leisure and prosperity furthered the building up 
of science and the spread of knowledge in an extraordinary 
degree' the consequence of which is what I have indicated, 
the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps 
the time is approaching which has so often been proph- 
esied, when religion will take her departure from European 
humanity, like a nurse which the child has out-grown: 
the child will now be given over to the instructions of a 
tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines 
which are founded merely on authority, miracles and 
revelations, are only suited to the childhood of humanity. 
Every one will admit that a race, the past duration of 
which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical, 
agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the 
life of a man of sixty, is as vet only in its first childhood, 
Demopheles. — Instead of taking an undisguised pleas- 



A DIALOGUE. 22* 

nre in prophesying the downfall of Christianity, how I 

wish you would consider what a measureless debt of grati- 
tude European humanity owes to it, how greatly it has 
benefitted by the religion which, after a long interval., 
followed it from its old home in the East. Europe re 
ceived from Christianity kleas which were quite new to it, 
the knowledge, I mean, of the fundamental truth that life 
cannot be an end in itself, that the true end of our ex- 
istence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had 
placed this end altogether in our present life, so that in 
this sense they may certainly be called blind heathens. 
And, in keeping with this view of life, all their virtues can 
be reduced to what is serviceable to the community, to 
what is useful, in fact. Aristotle says quite naively, 
" Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are 
the most useful to others." So tl e ancients thought 
patriotism the highest virtue, although it is really a very 
doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity and an 
enlightened self-interest are main elements in it. Just 
before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all the 
virtues, in order to discuss them singly. They are 
Justice, Courage, Temperance, Magnificence, Magnan- 
imity, Liberality, Gentleness, Good Sense and Wisdom. 
How different from the Christian virtues! Plato himself, 
incomparably the most transcendental philosopher of pre- 
Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than justice; 
and he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its 
own sake, whereas the rest make a happy life, vita beata, 
the aim of all virtue, and moral conduct the way to attain 
it. Christianity freed European humanity from this 
shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow un- 
certain existence of every day, 

" coel unique tueri 
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus." 

Christianity, accordingly, does net preach mere Justice, 
but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works, 
Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies, Patience, Humility, 
Resignation, Faith and Hope. It even went a step 
further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we 
need deliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self- 
denial, chastity, giving up of one's own will, that is, 



280 RELIGION. 

turning away from life and its illusory pleasures, ll 
taught the healing power of pain: an instrument of 
torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready 
to admit that this earnest, this only correct view of life 
was thousands of years previously spread all over Asia in 
other forms, as it is still, independently of Christianity; 
but for European humanity it was a new and great revela- 
tion. For it is well known that the population of Europe 
consists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from 
their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; 
on their wanderings these races lost the original religion 
of their homes, and with it the right view of life: so, 
under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, 
which were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for in- 
stance, the Drnidic or the Greek religion, the metaphysical 
content of which was little and shallow. In the mean- 
time the Greeks developed a special, one might almost say, 
an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone o.« 
all the nations who have ever existed on the earth, pecul- 
iar, fine and exact: so that their mythology took, in the 
mouth of their poets, and in the hands of their artists, an 
exceedingly beautiful and pleasing shape. On the other 
hand, the true and deep significance of life was lost to the 
Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up 
children, till Christianity came and recalled them to the 
serious side of existence. 

Philalethes. — And to see the effects you need only 
compare antiquity with the Middle Age; the time of Peri- 
cles, say, with the fourteenth century. You could scarcely, 
believe you were dealing with the same kind of beings. 
There, the finest development of humanity, excellent 
institutions, wise laws, shrewdly apportioned offices, 
rationally ordered freedom, all the arts, including poetry 
and philosophy, at their best; the production of works 
which, after thousands of years, are unparalleled, the crea- 
tions, as it were, of a higher order of beings, which we can 
never imitate; life embellished by the noblest fellowship, 
as portrayed in Xenoph'on's *'* Banquet." Look on the 
other picture, if you can; a time at which the Church had 
enslaved the minds, and violence the bodies of men, that 
knights and priests might lay the whole weight of life 
upon the common beast of burden, the third estate. 
There, you have .might as right, Feudalism and Fauati- 



A DIALOG US. $31 

eism in close alliance, and in their train abominable 
ignorance and darkness of mind, a corresponding intoler- 
ance, discord of creeds, religious wars, crusades, inquisi- 
tions and persecutions: as the form of fellowship, chivalry, 
compounded of savagery and folly, with its pedantic 
system of ridiculous false pretenses carried to an extreme, 
its degrading superstition and apish veneration for 
women. Gallantry is the residue of this veneration, de- 
servedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance: it affords 
continual food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks 
would have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the 
practice developed into a regular and methodical service of 
women; it imposed deeds of heroism, coars d' amour, 
bombastic troubadour songs etc.; although it is to be 
observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intel- 
lectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas 
among the material sluggish Germans, the knights dis- 
tinguished themselves rather by drinking and stealing; 
they were good at boozing and filling their castles with 
plunder; though in the courts to be sure, there was no 
lack of insipid love-songs. What caused this utter trans- 
formation? Migration and Christianity. 

Demopheles. — I am glad you reminded me of it. 
Migration was the source of the evil; Christianity the dam 
on which it broke. It was chiefly by Christianity that the 
raw, wild hordes which came flooding in were controlled 
and tamed. The savage man must first of all learn to 
kneel, to venerate, to obey; after that, he can be civilized. 
This was done in Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany bv 
Winifried the Saxon, who was a genuine Boniface. It 
was migration of peoples, the last advance of Asiatic races 
toward Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of 
those under Attila, Genghis^ Khan, and Timur, and as a 
comic afterpiece, by the gypsies — it was this movement 
which swept away the humanity of the ancients. C-hristian- 
ity was precisely the principle which set itself to work 
against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of 
the Middle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most 
necessary to set limits to the savage barbarism of those 
masters of violence, the princes and knights; it was what 
Oroke up the ice-floes in that mighty deluge. Still, the 
chief aim of Christianity is uot so much to make this life 
pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away 



232 RELIGION*. 

over this span of time* over this fleeting dream, and geeks 
to lead us to eternal welfare. Its tendency is ethical in 
the highest sense of the word, a sense unknown in Europe 
till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting the 
morality and religion of the ancients side by side with 
those of Christendom. 

Philalethes. — You are quite right as regards theory; 
but look at the practice! In comparison with the ages of 
Christianity the ancient world was unquestionably less 
cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths by exquisite 
torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The an- 
cients, further, were very enduring, laid great stress o 
justice, frequently sacrificed themselves for their country, 
showed such traces of every kind of magnanimity, and 
such genuine manliness, that to this day an acquaintance 
with their thoughts and actions is called the study of 
Humanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, 
butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the 
natives in America, and the introduction of African slaves 
in their place; and among the ancients there is nothing 
analogous to this, nothing that can be compared with it; 
for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the vernce, 
were a contented race, and faithfully devoted to their 
masters' service, and as different from the miserable 
negroes of the sugar plantations, which are a disgrace to 
humanity, as their two colors are distinct. Those special 
moral delinquencies for which we reproach the ancients, 
and which are perhaps less uncommon nowadays than 
appears on the surface to be the case, are trifles compared 
with the Christian enormities I have mentioned. Can 
you then, all considered, maintain that mankind has been 
really made morally better by Christianity? 

Demopheles. — If the results haven't everywhere been 
in keeping with the purity and truth of the doctrine, it 
may be because the doctrine has been too noble 
too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been 
placed too high. It was so much easier to come up to the 
heathen system, or to the Mohammedan. It is precisely 
what is noble and dignified that is most liable everywhere 
to misuse and fraud: abusus optimi pessimus. Those 
high doctrines have accordingly now and then served as a 
pretext for the most abominable proceedings, and for acts 
of unmitigated wickedness. The downfall of the in- 



A DIALOGUE. 283 

Btitutions of the old world, as well as of its arts and 
sciences, is, as I have said, to be attributed to the inroad 
of foreign barbarians. The inevitable result of this inroad 
was that iguorance and savagery got the upper hand; 
consequently violence and knavery established their 
dominion, and knights and priests became a burden to 
mankind. It is partly, however, to be explained by the fact 
that the new religion made eternal and not temporal wel- 
fare the object of desire, taught that simplicity of heart 
was to be preferred to knowledge, and looked askance at 
all worldly pleasure. Now the arts and sciences subserve 
worldly pleasure; but in so far as they could be made 
serviceable to religion they were promoted, and attained 
a certain degree of perfection. 

Philalethes. — In a very narrow sphere. The sciences 
were suspicious companions, and as such, were placed 
under restrictions: on the other hand darling ignorance, 
that element so necessary to a system of faith, was care- 
fully nourished. 

Demopheles. — And yet mankind's possessions in the 
way of knowledge up to that period, which were preserved 
in the writings of the ancients, were saved from destruc- 
tion by the clergy, especially by these in the monasteries. 
How would it have fared if Christianity hadn't come in 
just before the migration of peoples? 

Philalethes. — It would really be a most useful inquiry 
to try and make, with the coldest impartiality, an unprej- 
udiced, careful and accurate comparison of the advantages 
and disadvantages which may be put down to religion. 
For that, of course, a much larger knowledge of historical 
and psychological data than either of us command, would 
be necessary. Academies might make it a subject for a 
prize essay. 

Demopheles. — They'll take good care not to do so. 

Philalethes, — I'm surprised to hear you say that: it's 
a bad lookout for religion. However, there are acad- 
emies which, in proposing a subject for competition, 
make it a secret condition that the prize is to go to the 
man who best interprets their own view. If we could only 
begin by getting a statistician to tell us how many crimes 
are prevented every year by religious, and how many by 
other motives, there would be very few of the former. 
If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you may rety 



234 RELIGION. 

upon it that the first consideration which enters his heaJ 
is the penalty appointed for it, and the chances that it 
will fall upon him: then comes, as a second consideration, 
the risk to his reputation. If I am not mistaken, he will 
ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, before 
he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he 
gets safely over those two first bulwarks against crime, 1 
think religion alone will very rarely hold him back from 
it 

Demopheles. — I think that it will very often do so, 
especially when its influence works through the medium 
of custom. An atrocious act is at once felt to be repul- 
sive. What is this but the effect of early impressions? 
Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of 
noble birth, will make trememloijs sacrifices to perform 
what he has promised, motived entirely by the fact that 
his father has often earnestly impressed upon him in his 
childhood that " a man of honor " or " a gentleman" or 
"a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate. 

Philalethes. — That's no use unless there is a certain 
inborn honorableness. You mustn't ascribe to religion 
what results from innate goodness of character, by which 
compassion for the man who would suffer by the crime 
keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine 
moral motive, and as such it is independent of all 
religions. 

Demopheles. — But this is a motive which rarely affects 
the multitude unless it assumes a religious aspect. The 
religious aspect at any rate strengthens its power for good. 
Yet without any such natural foundation, religious motives 
alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be 
surprised at this in the case of the multitude when we see 
that even people of education pass now and then under 
the influence, not indeed of religious motives, which are 
founded on something which is at least allegorically true, 
but of the most absurd superstition, and allow themselves 
to be guided by it ail their life long; as, for instance, 
undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down 
thirteen at table, obeying chance omens, and the like. 
How much more likely is the multitude to be guided by 
such things. You can't form any adequate idea of the 
narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of 
absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, 



A DIALOG TIE. 235 

unjust, and malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People 
iu this condition — and they form the great bulk of human- 
ity — must be led and controlled as well as may be, even if 
it be by really superstitious motives; until such time as 
they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an 
instance of the direct working of religion, may be cited 
the fact, common enough, in Italy especially, of a thief 
restoring stoleu goods, through the influence of his con- 
fessor, who says he won't absolve him if he doesn't. 
Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows 
a most decided influence: whether it be that a man places 
himself expressly in the position of a purely moral 
being, and as such looks upon himself as solemnly ap- 
pealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where the 
formula is simply je le jure, and also among the Quakers, 
whose solemn yea or nay is regarded as a substitute for 
the oath; or whether it be that a man really believes he is 
pronouncing something which may affect his eternal 
happiness — a belief which is presumably only the investi- 
ture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious consider- 
ations are a means of awaking and calling out a man's 
moral nature. How often it happens that a man agrees 
to take a false oath, and then, when it comes to the point, 
suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day. 

Philalethes. — Oftener still false oaths are really 
taken, and truth and right trampled under foot, though 
all witnesses of the oath know it well. Still you are 
quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable example of 
the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all 
you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes 
much beyond this. Just think; if a public proclamation 
were suddenly made, announcing the repeal of all the 
criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would have the 
courage to go home from here under the protection of re- 
ligious motives. If, in the same way, all religions were 
declared untrue, we could, under the protection of the 
laws alone, go on living as before, without any special 
addition to our apprehensions or our measures of precau- 
tion. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have 
very frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influ- 
ence. One may say generally that duties toward God and 
duties toward humanity are in inverse ratio. It is easy to 
Jet adulation of the Deitv make amends for lack of proper 



236 RELIGION. 

Lehavior toward man. And so we see that in all times and 
in all countries the great majority of mankind find it 
much easier to beg their way to heaven by prayers than to 
deserve to go there by their actions. In every religion it 
soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and 
the like are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine 
vill than moral actions; the former, especially if they are 
bound up with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually 
come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter, 
Sacrifices in temples, the saving of masses, the founding 
•of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon 
come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great 
crimes are expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection 
to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to 
the temples and the clergy, the building of monasteries 
and the like. The consequence of all this is that the 
priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of 
the gods. And if matters don't go quite so far as that 
where is the religion whose adherents don't consider 
prayers, praise and manifold acts of devotion, a substitute, 
at least in part, for moral conduct? Look at England, 
where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, the Christian 
Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a substi- 
tute for the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way 
identified with it, and takes its name — and this in order 
that the commands of Jehovah for the Sabbath (that is, 
the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his six 
days'' labor, so that it is essentially the last day of the week), 
might be applied to the Christian Sunday, the dies soils, 
the first day of the week which the sun opens in glory, 
the day of devotion and joy. The consequence of this 
fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking," or "the desecration of 
the Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether of 
business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly 
books, are on Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely 
the ordinary man must believe that if, as his spiritual 
guides impress upon him, he is only constant in " a strict 
observance of the holy Sabbath," and "a regular attend- 
ance on Divine Service," that is, if he only invariably idles 
away his time on Sundays and doesn't fail to sit two hours 
in church to hear the same litany for the thousandth time 
and mutter it in tune with the others, he may reckon on 
indulgence in regard to those little peccadilloes which he 



A DIALOGUE. 23? 

occasionally allows himself. Those devil's in human form — 
the slave owners and traders in the free states of North 
America (they should be called the slave states) — are, as a 
rule, orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a 
grave sin to work on Sundays: and in confidence in this, 
and their regular attendance at church, they hope for 
eternal happiness. The demoralizing tendency of religion 
is less problematical than its moral influence. How great 
and how certain that moral influence must be to make 
amends for the enormities which religions, especially the 
Christian and Mohammedan religions, have produced and 
spread over the earth! Think of the fanaticism, the end- 
less persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy 
of which the ancients had no conception! think of the 
crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inex- 
cusable, its war-cry " It is the will of God," its object to 
gain possession of the grave of one who preached love and 
sufferance! think of the cruel expulsion and extermination 
of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think of the orgies of 
blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody 
and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three conti- 
nents, or those of Christianity in America, whose inhabit- 
ants were for the most part, and in Cuba entirely, 
exterminated. According to Las Casas, Christianity 
murdered twelve millions in forty years, of course, all in 
majorem Dei gloriam, and for the propagation of the 
Gospel, and because what wasn't Christian wasn't even 
looked upon as human! I have, it is true, touched upon 
these matters before; but when in our day, we hear of 
"Latest News from the Kingdom of God,"* we shall not 
*)e weary of bringing old news to mind. And, above all, 
ion't let us forget India, the cradle of the human race, 
or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where 
first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most 
cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original 
fnith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of 
the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous 
and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic 
fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud the 
Ghaznevid of cursed memory down to Aureng Zeb, the 

* A missionary periodical, the fortieth annual number of whicl/ 
appeared in 1856. 



238 RELIGION. 

fratricide, whom the Portuguese Christians have zealously 
imitated by destruction of temples and the auto da fe of 
the inquisition at Goa. Don't let us forget the chosen 
people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah's express 
command, stolen from their old and trusty friends in 
Egypt the gold and silver vessels which had been lent to 
them, made a murderous and plundering inroad into " the 
Promised Land," with the murderer Moses at their head, 
to tear it from the rightful owners, again by the same 
Jehovah's express and repeated commands, showing no 
mercy, exterminating the inhabitants, women, children 
and all (Joshua, ch. 9 and 10). And all this, simply be- 
cause they weren't circumcised and didn't know Jehovah, 
which was reason enough to justify every enormity against 
them; just as for the same reason, in earlier times, the 
infamous knavery of the Patriarch Jacob and his chosen 
people against Hamor, king of Shalem, and his people, is 
reported to his glory because the people were unbelievers! 
(Genesis xxxiii. 18.) Truly, it is the worst side of reli- 
gions that the believers of one religion have allowed them- 
selves every sin against those of another, and with the 
utmost ruffianism and cuelty persecuted them; the 
Mohammedans against the Christians and Hindoos; the 
Christians against the Hindoos, Mohammedans, American 
natives, negroes, Jews, heretics, and others. 

Perhaps i go too far in saying all religions. For the 
sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities 
perpetrated in the name of religion are only to be put 
down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds, that is, the 
Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and 
Islamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of 
Hindoos and Buddhists. Although it is a matter of 
common knowledge that about the fifth century of our 
era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans from its* 
ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian 
peninsula, and afterward spread over the whole of the 
rest of Asia; as far as I know, we have no definite account 
of any crimes of violence, or wars, or cruelties, perpetrated 
in the course of it. That may, of course, be attribu table 
to the obscurity which veils the history of those countries; 
bat the exceedingly mild character of their religion, to- 
gether with their unceasing inculcation of forbearance 
toward all living things, and the fact that Brabmanism bv 



A DIALOGUE. 239 

its caste system properly admits no proselytes, allows one 
to hope that their adherents may be acquitted of shedding 
of blood on a large scale, and of cruelty in any form. 
Spence Hardy, in his excellent book on "Eastern 
Monachism," praises the extraordinary tolerance of the 
Buddhists, and adds his assurance that the annals of 
Buddhism will furnish fewer instances of religions persecu- 
tion than those of any other religion. As a matter of fact, 
it is only to monotheism that intolerance is essential: an 
only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no 
other god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand, 
are naturally tolerant; they live and let live; their 
own colleagues are the chief objects of their sufferance, as 
being gods of the same religion. This toleration is after- 
ward extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly, 
hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases, 
to an equality of rights; the chief example of which is 
shown by the fact that the Romans willingly admitted and 
venerated Phrygian, Egyptian and other gods. Hence, it 
is that monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle 
of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical trib- 
unals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of 
the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian 
colossi, which had looked on the sun three thousand years; 
just because a jealous god had said, " Thou shalt make no 
graven image." 

But to return to the chief point. You are certainly 
right in insisting on the strong metaphysical needs, of 
Mankind; but religion appears to me to be not so much 
a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At any rate, we 
have seen that in regard to the furtherance of morality, 
its utility is, for the most part, problematical, its dis- 
advantages, and especially the atrocities which have 
followed in its train, patent to the light of day. Of 
course it is quite a different matter if we consider the 
utility of religion as a prop of thrones; for where these are 
held " by the grace of God," throne and altar are inti- 
mately associated; and every wise prince who loves his throne 
and his family will appear at the head of his people as an 
exemplar of true religiou. Even Machiavelli, in the eight- 
eenth chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended 
religion to princes. Beyond this, one may say that revealed 
religions stand to philosophy exactly in the relation of 



240 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 

''sovereigns by the grace of God," to "the sovereignty of 
the people; " so that the two former terms of the parallel 
are in natural alliance. 

Demopheles. — Oh, don't take that tone! You're going 
hand in hand with ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch- 
enemy of all legislative order, all civilization and alV 
humanity. 

Philalethes. — You are right. It was only a sophism 
of mine, what the fencing-master calls a feint. I retract 
it. But see how disputing sometimes makes an honest 
man unjust and malicious. Let us stop. 

Demopheles. — I can't help regretting that, after all 
the trouble I've taken, I haven't altered your disposition 
in regard to religion. On the other hand, I can assure 
you that everything you have said hasn't shaken my con- 
viction of its high value and necessity. 

Philalethes. — I believe you; for as we read in 
Hudibras: 

" He that complies against his will 
Is of his own opinion still." 

My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking 
mineral waters, the after effects are the true ones. 

Demopheles. — Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your 
case. 

Philalethes. — It might be so, if I could digest a 
certain Spanish proverb. 

Demopheles. — Which is? 

Philalethes. — " Behind the cross stands the devil." 

Demopheles. — Come, don't let us part with sarcasms. 
Let us rather admit that religion, like Janus, or better 
still, like the Brahman god of death, Yama, has two faces, 
and like him, one friendly, the other sullen. Each of us 
has kept his eyes fixed on one alone. 

Philalethes. — You are right, old fellow! 



A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 

The controversy between Theism and Pantheism 
might be presented in an allegorical or dramatic form by 
supposing a dialogue between two persons in the pit of a 



A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 241 

theater at Milan during the performance of a piece. One 
of them, convinced that he is in Girolamo's renowned 
marionette-theater, admires the art by which the director 
gets up the dolls and guides their movements. " Oh, you 
are quite mistaken," says the other, " we're in the Teatro 
della Scala; it is the manager and his troop who are on the 
stage; they are the persons you see before you; the poet 
too is taking a part." 

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says 
nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; 
it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous 
synonym for the word" world." It comes to the same thin£ 
whether you say "the world is God," or "God is the 
world." But if you start from "God" as something that 
is given in experience, and has to be explained, and then 
say, "God is the world," you are affording what is. to some 
extent, an explanation, in so far as you are reducing what 
is unknown to what is partly known (ignotum per ?iotius); 
but it is only a verbal explanation. If however, you start 
from what is really given, that is to say, from the world, 
and say, " the world is God," it is clear that yon say 
nothing, or at least you are explaining what is unknown 
by what is more unknown. 

Hence Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as 
you start from a god, that is, in so far as you possess him 
as something with which you are already familiar, can you 
end by identifying him with the world; and your purpose 
in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decent 
fashion. In other words, you do not start clear from the 
world as something that requires explanation; you start 
'rom God as something that is given, and not knowing 
ivhat to do with him, you make the world take over his 
*61e. This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking an un- 
prejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream 
of regarding it as a god. It must be a very ill-advised god 
who knows no better way of diverting himself than by 
turning into such a world as ours, such a mean, shabby 
world, there to take the form of innumerable millions who 
live indeed, but are fretted and tormented, and who 
manage to exist awhile together only by preying on one 
another; to bear misery, need and death, without measure 
and without object, in the form, for instance, of millions 
of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe 



242 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 

who, in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in 
damp rooms or the cheerless halls of a factory. What a 
pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used to 
another mode of existence! 

We find accordingly that what is described as the great 
advance from Theism to Pantheism, if looked at seriously, 
and not simply as a masked negation of the sort indicated 
above, is a transition from what is unproved and hardl} 
conceivable to what is absolutely absurd. For, however 
obscure, however loose or confused may be the idea which 
we connect with the word " God," there are two pred- 
icates which are inseparable from it, the highest power 
and the highest wisdom. It is absolutely absurd to 
think that a being endowed with these qualities should 
have put himself into the position described above. 
Theism, on the other hand, is something which is merely 
unproved; ana if it is difficult to look upon the infinite 
world as the work of a personal, and therefore individual, 
Being, the like of which we know only from our experi- 
ence of the animal world, it is nevertheless not an abso- 
lutely absurd idea. That a Being, at once almighty and 
all-good, should create a world of torment is always 
conceivable; even though we do not know why he does 
so; and accordingly we find that when people ascribe the 
height of goodness to this Being, they set up the inscru- 
table nature of his wisdom as the refuge by which the 
doctrine escapes the charge of absurdity. Pantheism, 
however, assumes that the creative God is himself the 
world of infinite torment, and, in this little world alone, 
dies every second, and that entirely of his own will; which 
is absurd. It would be much more correct to identify 
the world with the devil, as the venerable author of the 
"'Deutsche T)ieoloq%e" has, in fact, done in a passage of his 
immortal work, where he says, " Wherefore tha evil spiril 
and nature are one, and where nature is not overcome, 
neither is the evil adversary overcome.' 

It is manifest that the Pantheists give the .oansara the 
name of God. The same name is given h " the mystics to 
the Nirvana. The latter, however, state more about the 
Nirvana than they know, which is not done by the 
Buddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly a relative noth- 
ing. It is only Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans win. 
$ive its proper and correct meaning to the word " God. '' 



ON BOORS AND READING. 243 

The expression, often heard nowadays, "the world is 
an end-in-itself," leaves it uncertain whether Pantheism 
or a simple Fatalism is to be taken as the explanation of it. 
But, whichever it be, the expression looks upon the world 
from a physical point of view onty, and leaves out of sight 
its moral significance, because you cannot assume a moral 
significance without presenting the world as means to a 
higher end. The notion that the world has a physical but 
not a moral meaning is the most mischievous error sprung 
from the greatest mental perversity. 



ON BOOKS AND HEADING. 

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company 
with riches. The poor man is restrained by poverty 
and need: labor occupies his thoughts, and takes yie 
place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant 
live for their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the 
field; as may be seen every day; and they can also 
be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for 
that which gives them their greatest value. 

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely 
repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the 
pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has 
outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of 
the work of thought is already done for us. This is why 
it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied 
with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind 
is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. 
So it comes about that if any one spends almost the whole 
day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the 
intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses 
the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, 
:i last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many 
learned persons; they have read themselves stupid. For 
to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do noth- 
ing but read, is even more paralyzing to the mind than 
constant manual labor, which at least allows those engaged 
in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring never free 
from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its 
elasticity: and so does the mind if other people's thoughts 



244 ON BOOKS AND HEADING 

are constantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the 
stomach and impair the whole hody by taking too much 
nourishment, so you can overfill and choke the mind by 
feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer are 
the traces left by what you have read; the mind becomes 
like a tablet crossed over and over with writing. There 
is no time for ruminating, and in no other way can you 
assimilate what you have read. If you read on and on 
without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have 
read cannot strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in 
fact, just the same with mental as with bodily food; 
hardly the fifth part of what one takes is assimilated. 
The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like. 
The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper are 
nothing more than footsteps in the sand; you see the way 
the man has gone, but to know what he saw on his walk, 
yo,u want his eyes. 

There is no quality of style that can be gained by reading 
writers who possess it; whether it be persuasiveness, im- 
agination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness, 
bitterness, brevity, grace, ease of expression or wit, unex- 
pected contrasts, a laconic or naive manner, and the like. 
But if these qualities are already in us, exist, that is to 
say, potential^, we can call them forth and bring them to 
consciousness; we can learn the purposes to which they 
can be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination to 
use them, or get courage to do so; we can judge by ex- 
amples the effect of applying them, and so acquire the 
correct use of them; and of course it is only when we have 
arrived at that point that we actually possess these 
qualities. The only way in which reading can form style 
is by teaching us the use to which we can put our own 
natural gifts. We must have these gifts before we begin 
to learn the use of them. Without them, reading teaches 
us nothing but cold, dead mannerisms and makes us 
shallow imitators. 

The strata of the earth preserve in rows the creatures 
which lived in former ages; and the array of books on the 
shelves of a library stores up in like manner the errors of 
the past and the way in which they have been exposed. 
Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their 



ON BOOKS AND READING. 245 

time, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are 
stiff and fossilized, and an object of curiosity to the 
literary palaeontologist alone. 

Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his 
army, which stretched further than the eye could reach, in 
the thought that of all these, after a hundred years, not 
one would be alive. And in looking over a huge catalogue 
of new books, one might weep at thinking that, when ten 
years have passed, not one of them will be heard of. 

It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, yoei 
stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity, 
swarming in ail directions, crowding and soiling every- 
thing, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which 
no man can count, of bad books, those rank weeds of 
literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and 
choke it. The time, money and attention of the public, 
which rightfully belong to good books and their noblb 
aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the 
mere purpose of making money or procuring places. 
So they are not only useless, they do positive mischief. 
Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature has no 
other aim than to get a few shillings out of the pockets of 
the public; and to this end author, publisher and reviewer 
are in league. 

Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a 
profitable and successful one, practiced by litterateurs, 
hack writers and voluminous authors. In complete dis- 
regard of good taste and the true culture of the period, 
they have succeeded in getting the whole of the world of 
fashion into leading strings, so that they are all 
trained to read iu time, and all the same thing, viz,, the 
newest books; and that for the purpose of getting food 
for conversation iu the circles in which they move. 
This is the aim served by bad novels, produced by writers 
who were once celebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer-Lytton, 
Eugene Sue. What can be more miserable than the lot of 
a reading public like this, always bound to peruse the 
latest works of extremely commonplace persons who write 
for money only, and who are therefore never few in 
number? and for this advantage they are content to know 
•by m*me only the works of the few superior minds of all 



246 ON BOOKS AND HEALING. 

ages and all countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a 
singularly cunning device for robbing the leading public 
of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be 
devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead 
of being occupied by the daily bungling of commonplace 
persons. 

Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important 
thing to be able to refrain. Skill in doing so consists in 
not taking mto one's hands any book merely because at 
the time it happens to be extensively read: such as polit- 
ical or religious pamj hlets, novels, poetry, and the like, 
which make a noise, and may even attain to several 
editions in the first and last year of their existence. 
Consider, rather, that the man who writes for fools is 
always sure of a large audience; be careful to limit your 
time for reading, and devote it exclusively to the works of 
those great minds of all times and countries, who o'ertop 
the rest of humanity, those whom the voice of fame points 
to as such. These alone really educate and instruct. 
You can never read bad literature too little, nor good 
literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; 
they destroy the mind. Because people always read what 
is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain in 
the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail in 
their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into 
its own mire. 

There are at all times two literatures in progress, running 
side by side, but little known to each other: the one real, 
the other only apparent. The former grows into per- 
manent literature; it is pursued by those who live for 
science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet, but ex- 
tremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen 
works in a century; these, however, are permanent. The 
other kind is pursued by persons who live on science 01 
poetry; it goes at a gallop, with much noise and shouting 
of partisans; and every twelvemonth puts a thousand works 
on the market. But after a few years one asks, " Where 
are they? where is the glory which came so soon and made 
so much clamor?" This kind may be called fleeting, and 
the other, permanent literature. 

In the history of politics, half a century is always a 



ON BOORS AND READING. 24? 

considerable time; the matter which goes to form them is 
ever on the move; there is always something going on. 
But in the history of literature there is often a complete 
standstill for the same period; nothing has happened, for 
clumsy attempts don't count. You are just where you 
were fifty years previously. 

To explain what I mean, let me compare the advance of 
knowledge among mankind to the course taken by a 
planet. The false paths on which humanity usually enters 
after every important advance are like the epicycles in the 
Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one of them, 
the world is just where it was before it entered it. But 
the great minds, who really bring the race further on its 
course, do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes 
from time to time. This explains why posthumous fame 
is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise, 
and vice versa. An instance of such an epicycle is the 
philosophy started by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned 
by Hegel's caricature of it. This epicycle was a deviation 
from the limit to which philosophy had been ultimately 
bought by Kant; and at that point I took it up again 
afterward, to carry it further. In the intervening period 
the sham philosophers I have mentioned and some others 
went through their epicycle, which has just came to an 
end; so that those who went with them on their course 
are conscious of the fact that they are exactly at the 
point from which they started. 

This circumstance explains why it is that, every thirty 
years or so, science, literature, and art, as expressed in the 
spirit of the age are declared bankrupt. The errors which 
appear from time to time mount to such a height in that 
period that the mere weight of their absurdity makes the 
fabric fall; while the opposition to them has been gather- 
ing force at the same time. So an upset takes place, often 
followed by an error in the opposite direction. To ex- 
hibit these movements in their periodical return would be 
the true practical aim of the history of literature: little 
attention, however, is paid to it. And besides, the com- 
paratively short duration of these periods makes it diffi- 
cult to collect the data of epochs long gone by, so that it 
is most convenient to observe how the matter stands in 
one's own generation. An instance of this tendency, 
drawn from physical science, is supplied in the Neptunian 



248 ON BOOKS AND HEADING, 

geology of Werter. But let me keep to the example cited 
above, the nearest we can take, in German philosophy, 
the brilliant epoch of Kant was immediately followed by a 
period which aimed rather at being imposing than at con- 
vincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to 
be dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unin- 
telligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Phi- 
losophy could make ?io progress in this fashion; and at last 
the whole school and its method became bankrupt. 
For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came to such a 
pass — whether because they talked such sophisticated 
nonsense, or were so unscrupulously puffed, or because the 
entire aim of this pretty piece of work was quite obvious — 
that in the end there was nothing to prevent the char- 
latanry of the whole business from becoming manifest to 
everybody: and when, in consequence of certain dis- 
closures, the favor it had enjoyed in high quarters warn 
withdrawn, the system was openly ridiculed. This most 
miserable of all the meager philosophies that have ever 
existed came to grief, and dragged down with it into the 
abysm of discredit the systems of Fichte and Schelling 
which had preceded it. And so, as far as Germany is 
concerned, the total philosophical incompetence of the 
first half of the century following upon Kant is quite 
plain: and still the Germans boast of their talent for 
philosophy in comparison with foreigners, especially since 
an English writer has been so maliciously ironical as to 
call them " a nation of thinkers." 

For an example of the general system of epicycles drawn 
from the history of art, look at the school of sculpture 
which flourished in the last century and took its name 
from Bernini, more especially at the development of it 
which prevailed in France. The ideal of this school was 
not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of 
the simplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the 
manners of a French minuet. This tendency became 
bankrupt when, under Winckelmann's direction, a return 
was made to the antique school. The history of painting 
furnishes an illustration in the first quarter of the century, 
when art was looked upon merely as a means and instru- 
ment of mediaeval religions sentiment and its themes con- 
sequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone: these, 
however, were treated by painters who had none of the 



ON BOOKS AND READING. 249 

true earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they 
followed Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico 
da Fiesole and others like them, rating them higher even 
than the really great masters who followed. It was in 
view of this error, and because in poetry an analogous aim 
had at the same time found favor, that Goethe wrote his 
" Pfaffenspiel." This school, too, got the reputation of 
being whimsical, became bankrupt, and was followed by a 
return to nature, which proclaimed itself in genre pictures 
and scenes of life of every kind, even though it now and 
then strayed into what was vulgar. 

The progress of the human mind in literature is 
similar. The history of literature is for the most part likf 
the catalogue of a museum of deformities; the spirit in 
which they keep best is pigskin. The few creatures that 
have been born in goodly shape need not be looked for 
there. They are still alive, and are everywhere to be met 
with in the world, immortal, and with their years ever green. 
They alone form what I have called real literature; the 
history of which, poor as it is in persons, we learn from 
our youth up out of the mouths of all educated people, 
before compilations recount it for us. 

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for reading 
literary histories, in order to be able to chatter about 
everything, without having any real knowledge at all, let 
me refer to a passage in Lichtenberg's works, (vol. II. p. 
302), which is well worth perusal. 

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history of 
science and learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our day, 
is very prejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself. There is 
pleasure in following up this history; but, as a matter of fact, it 
leaves the mind, not empty indeed, but without any power of its 
own, just because it makes it so full. Whoever has felt the desire, 
not to fill up his mind, but to strengthen it, to devolop his faculties 
and aptitudes, and generally, to enlarge his powers, will have found 
that there is nothing so weakening as intercourse with a so-called 
litterateur, on a matter of knowledge on which he has not thought 
at all, though he knows a thousand little facts appertaining to its 
history and literature. It is like reading a cookery book when you 
are hungry. I believe that so-called literary history will never 
thrive among thoughtful people, who are conscious of their own 
worth and the worth of real knowledge. These people are more 
given to employing their own reason than to troubling themselves 
to know how others have employed theirs. The worst of it is that, 
as you will find, the more knowledge takes the direction of literary 



850 PHYSIOGNOMY 

research, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes; the 
only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Such 
persons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree 
than those who really possess it. It is surely a well iounded remark, 
that knowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those alone let 
themselves be blown out with pride, who, incapable of extending 
knowledge in their own persons, occupy themselves with clearing 
up dark points in its history, or are able to recount what others have 
done. They are proud, because tney consider this occupation, 
which is mostly of a mechanical nature, the practice of knowledge 
I could illustrate what I mean by examples, but it would be an 
odious task. 

Still, I wish some one would attempt a tragical history 
of literature, giving the way in which the writers and 
artists, who form the proudest possession of the various 
nations which have given them birth, have been treated 
by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit 
the ceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine 
in all times and countries has had to wage with what was bad 
and perverse. It would tell of the martyrdom of almost 
all those who truly enlightened humanity, of almost all 
the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us 
how, with few exceptions, they were tormented to death, 
without recognition, without sympathy, without followers; 
how they lived in poverty and misery, while fame, 
honor, and riches, were the lot of the unworthy; how 
their fate was that of Esau, who, while he was hunting 
and getting venison for his father, was robbed of the 
blessing by Jacob, disguised in his brother's clothes; how, 
in spite of all, they were kept up by the love of their fork, 
until at last the bitter fight of the teacher of humanity 
is over, until the immortal laurel is held out to him, and 
the hour strikes when it can be said: 

"Der schwere Panzer wird zum Fliigelkleide 
Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude." 



PHYSIOGNOMY. 

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the 
face an expression and revelation of the whole character, 
is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a 
safe one to go by; evidenced as it is by the fact that 
people are always anxious to see any one who has made 



P&YSIOGXOMT. 251 

himself famous by good or evil, or as the author of some 
extraordinary work; or if they cannot get a sight of him, 
to hear at any rate from others what lje looks like. So 
people go to places where they may expect to see the 
person who interests them; the press, especially in 
England, endeavors to give a minute and striking de- 
scription of his appearance; painters and engravers lose 
no time in putting him visibly before us; and finally 
photography, on that very account of such high value, 
affords the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity. 
It is also a fact that in private life every one criticises .the 
physiognomy of those he comes across, first of all secretly 
trying to discern their intellectual and moral character 
from their features. This would be a useless proceeding 
if, as some foolish people fancy, the exterior of a man is a 
matter of no account; if, as they think, the soul is one 
thing and the body another, and the body related to the 
soul merely as the coat to the man himself. 

On the contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic, 
and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered, 
the alphabet of which we carry about with us already per- 
fected. As a matter of fact, the face of a man gives us 
fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; 
for his face is the compendium of all he will ever say, as it 
is the one record of all his thoughts and endeavors. 
And, moreover, the tongue tells the thought of one man only, 
whereas the face expresses a thought of nature itself: so 
that every one is worth attentive observation, even though 
every one may not be worth talking to. And if every 
individual is worth observation as a single thought of 
nature, how much more so is beauty, since it is a higher 
and more general conception of nature, is, in fact, hei 
thought of a species. This is why beauty is so captivating. 
it is a fundamental thought of nature: whereas the in- 
dividual is only a by-thought, a corollary. 

In private, people always proceed upon the principle 
that a man is what he looks; and the principle is a right 
one, only the difficulty lies in its application. For though 
the art of applying the principle is partly innate and may 
be partly gained by experience, no one is a master of it, 
and even the most experienced is not infallible. But for 
all that, whatever Figaro may say, it is not the face which 
deceives; it is we who ^eo«ivs ourselves in reading in it 
what is not there, 



?52 PHYSIOGNOMY. 

The deciphering of a face is certainly a great and diffi- 
cult art, and the principles of it can never be learned in 
the abstract. The first condition of success is to maintain 
a purely objective point of view, which is no easy matter. 
For, as soon as the faintest trace of anything subjective is 
oresent, whether dislike or favor, or fear or hope, or even 
the thought of the impression we ourselves are making 
upon the object of our attention, the characters we are 
trying to decipher become confused and corrupt. The 
sound of a language is really appreciated only by one who 
does not understand it, and that because, in thinking of 
the signification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign 
itself. So, in the same way, a physiognomy is correctly 
gauged only by one to whom it is still strange, who has 
not grown accustomed to the face by constantly meeting 
and conversing with the man himself. It is, therefore, 
strictly speaking, only the first sight of a man which 
affords that purely objective view which is uecessary for 
deciphering his features. An odor affects us only when 
we first come in contact with it, and the first glass of a 
wine is the one which gives us its true taste: in the same 
way, it is only at the first encounter that a face makes its 
full impression upon us. Consequently the first impression 
should be carefully attended to and noted, even written 
down if the subject of it is of personal importance, pro- 
vided of course, that one can trust one's own sense of 
\)ln^siognomy. Subsequent acquaintance and intercourse 
will obliterate the impression, but time will one day prove 
whether it is true. 

Let us, however, not conceal from ourselves the fact 
that this first impression is for the most part extremely 
unedifying. How poor most faces are! With the ex- 
ception of those that are beautiful, good-natured or 
intellectual, that is to say, the verr few and far between, 
I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a 
new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the 
reason that it presents a new and surprising combination 
of unedifying elements. To tell the truth, it is, as a rule, 
a sorry sight. There are some people whose faces bear the 
stamp of such artless vulgarity and baseness of character, 
such an animal limitation of intelligence, that one 
vonders how they can appear in public with such a coun- 
tenance, instead of wearing a mask. There are faces, 



PHYSIOGNOMY. 253 

indeed, the very sight of which produces a feeling of 
pollution. One cannot therefore take it amiss of people,, 
whose privileged position admits of it, if they manage 
to live in retirement and completely free from the painful 
sensation of " seeing new faces." The metaphysical ex- 
planation of this circumstance rests upon the considera- 
tion that the individuality of a man is precisely that by 
the very existence of which he should be reclaimed and 
corrected. If, on the other hand, a psychological ex- 
planation is satisfactory, let any one ask himself what 
kind of physiognomy he may expect in those who have all 
their life long, except on the rarest occasions, harbored 
nothing but petty, base and miserable thoughts, and 
vulgar, selfish, envious, wicked and malicious desires. 
Every one of these thoughts and desires has set its mark 
upon the face during the time it lasted, and by constant 
repetition, all these marks have in course of time become 
furrows and blotches, so to speak. Consequently, most 
people's appearance is such as to produce a shock at first 
sight: and it is only gradually that one gets accustomed 
to it, that is to say, becomes so deadened to the impres- 
sion that it has no more effect on one. 

And that the prevailing facial expression is the result of 
a long process of innumerable, fleeting and characteristic 
contractions of the features is just the reason why intel- 
lectual countenances are of gradual formation. It is 
indeed only in old age that intellectual men attain their 
sublime expression, while portraits of them in their youth 
show only the first traces of it. But. sn the other baud, 
what 1 have just said about the shock which the first sight 
of a face generally produces is in keeping with the remark 
that it is only at that first sight that it makes its true and 
full impression. For to get a purely objective and un- 
corrupted impression of it, we must stand in no kind of 
relation to the person; if possible, w r e must not yet have 
spoken with him. For every conversation places us to 
some extent upon a friendly footing, establishes a certain 
rapport, a mutual subjective relation, which is at once 
unfavorable to an objective point of view. And as every 
one's endeavor is to win esteem or friendship for himself, 
the man who is under observation will at once employ all 
those arts of dissimulation in which he is already versed, 
and corrupt us with his airs, hynocrisies and flatteries; se 



254 PHYSIOGNOMY. 

that what the first look clearly showed will soon be seeo 
by us no more. 

This fact is at the bottom of the saying that " most 
people gain by further acquaintance;" it ought, however, 
to run, "delude us by it." 3t 3s only when, later on, the 
bad qualities manifest themselves that our first judgment 
as a rule receives its justification and makes good its 
scornful verdict. It may be that " a further acquaint- 
ance " is an unfriendly one, and if that is so, we do not 
find in this case either that people gain by it. Another 
reason why people apparently gain on a nearer acquaint- 
ance is that the man whose first aspect warns us from 
him, as soon as we converse with him, no longer shows his 
own being and character, but also his education; that is, 
not only what he really is by nature, but also what he has 
appropriated to himself out of the common wealth of 
mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not to 
him, but to the sources from which he obtained it; so 
that we are often surprised to hear a minotaur speak so 
humanly. If we make a still closer acquaintance, the 
animal nature, of which his face gave promise, will 
manifest itself "in all its splendor. " If one is gifted svith 
an*acute sense for physiognomy, one should take special 
note of those verdicts which preceded a closer acquaintance 
and were therefore genuine. For the face of a man is the 
exact expression of what he is; and if he deceives us, that 
is our fault, not his. What a man says, on the other hand, 
is what he thinks, more often what he has learned, or it 
may be even, what he pretends to think. And besides, 
this, when we talk to him, or even hear him talking to 
others, we pay no attention to his physiognomy proper. 
It is the underlying substance, the fundamental datum, 
and we disregard it; what interests us is its pathognomy, its 
play of feature during conversation. This, however, is 
so arranged as to turn the good side upward. 

When Socrates said to a young man who was introduced 
to him to have his capabilities tested, " Talk in order 
that I may see you," if indeed by "seeing" he did not 
simply mean "hearing" he was right, so far as it is only 
in conversation that the features and especially the eyes 
become animated, and the intellectual resources and 
capacities set their mark upon the countenance. This puts 
us in a position to form a provisional notion of the degree 



PHYSIOGNOMY. 2bb 

and capacity of intelligence; which was in that case 
Socrates' aim. But in this connection it is to be ob- 
served, firstly, that the rule does not apply to moral 
qualities, which lie deeper; and in the second place, that 
what from an objective point of view we gain by the 
clearer development of the countenance in conversation, 
we lose from a subjective standpoint on account of the 
personal relation into which the speaker at once enters in 
regard to us, aucl which produces a slight fascination, so 
that, as explained above, we are not left impartial 
observers. Consequently from the last point of view we 
might say with greater accuracy, ''Do not speak in order 
that I may see you." 

For to get a pure and fundamental conception of a 
man's physiognomy, we must observe him when he is 
alone and left to himself. Society of any kind and con- 
versation throw a reflection upon him which isnothisown, 
generally to his advantage; as he is thereby placed in a 
state of action and re-action which sets him off. But 
alone and left to himself, plunged in the depths of his 
own thoughts and sensations, he is wholly himself, and a 
penetrating eye for physiognomy can at one glance take a 
general view of his entire character. For his face, looked 
at by and in itself, expresses the keynote of all his 
thoughts and endeavors, the arret irrevocable, the irrev- 
ocable decree of his destiny, the consciousness of which 
only comes to him when he is alone. 

The study of physiognomy is one of the chief means of 
a knowledge of mankind, because the cast of a man's face 
is the only sphere in which his arts of dissimulation are of 
no avail, since these arts extend only to that play of 
feature which is akin to mimicry. And that is why I 
recommend such a study to be undertaken when the sub- 
ject of it is alone and given up to his own thoughts, and 
before he is spoken to: and this partly for the reason 
that it is only in such a condition that inspection of the 
physiognomy pure and simple is possible, because conver- 
sation at once lets in a pathognomical element, in which a 
man can apply the arts of dissimulation which he has 
learned: partly again because personal contact, even of 
the very slightest kind, gives a certain bias and so corrupts 
the judgment of the observer. 

And in regard to the stmlv of ohvsioguomy in general, 



256 PHYSIOGNOMY. 

it is further to be observed that intellectual capacity is 
much easier of discernment than moral character. The 
former naturally takes a much more outward direction, 
and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of 
feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very 
glightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate 
from behind between a blockhead, a fool and a man of 
genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the 
torpidity and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets 
its mark upon every gesture, and so does intellect and a 
studious nature. Hence that remark of La Bruvere that 
there is nothing so slight, so simple or imperceptible but 
that our way of doing it enters in and betrays us: a fool 
neither comes nor goes, nor sits down, nor gets up, nor 
holds his tongue, nor moves about in the same way as an 
intelligent man. (And this is, be it observed by way of 
parenthesis, the explanation of that sure and certain in- 
stinct which, according to Helvetius, ordinary folk possess 
of discerning people of genius, and of getting out of 
their way.) 

The chief reason for this is that, the larger and more 
developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it the 
spine and nerves, the greater is the intellect; and not the 
intellect alone, but at the same time the mobility and 
pliancy of all the limbs: because the brain controls them 
more immediately and resolutely; so that everything 
hangs more upon a single thread, every movement of 
which gives a precise expression' to its purpose. This is 
analogous to, nay, is immediately connected with the fact 
that the higher an animal stands in the scale of develop- 
ment. the easier it becomes to kill it by wounding a single 
spot. Take, for example, batrachia: they are slow, 
cumbrous and sluggish in their movements; they are un- 
intelligent, and at the same time, extremely tenacious of 
life; the reason of which is that with a very small brain, 
their spine and nerves are very thick. Now gait and 
movement of the arms are mainly functions of the brain; 
our limbs receive their motion and every little modification 
of it from the brain through the medium of the spine 
This is why conscious movements fatigue us; the sensation 
of fatigue, like that of pain, has its seat in the brain, not, 
as people commonly suppose, in the limbs themselves; 
nence motion induces sleeo. On the other hand those 



PHYSIOGNOMY. 257 

motions which are not excited by the brain, that is, the 
unconscious movements of organic life, of the heart, of 
the lungs, etc., go on in their course without producing 
fatigue. And as thought equally with motion is a func- 
tion of the brain, the character of the brain's activity is 
?xpressed equally in both, according to the constitution 
tt the individual; stupid people move like lay-figures, 
while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent. 
But gesture and movement are not nearly so good an 
index of intellectual qualities as the face, the shape and 
size of the brain, the contraction and movement of the 
features, and above all the eye — from the small, dull, 
dead-looking eye of a pig up through all gradations to the 
irradiating, flashing eyes of a genius. The look of good 
sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs from 
that of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of 
subjection to the will, while the latter is free from it, 
And therefore one can well believe the anecdote told by 
Squarzafichi in his life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph 
Brivius, a contemporary of the poet, how once at the 
court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other noblemen 
and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his 
son, who was then a mere boy (he was afterward first 
duke of Milan), to pick out the wisest of the company; 
how the boy looked at them all for a little, and then took 
Petrarch by the hand and led him up to his father, to the 
great admiration of all present. For so clearly does 
nature set the mark of her dignity on the privileged 
among mankind that even a child can discern it. There- 
fore 1 should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever 
again they wish to trumpet about for thirty years a very 
commonplace person as a great genius, not to choose for 
the purpose such a beerhouse-keeper physiognomy as was 
possessed by that philosopher, upon whose face nature had 
written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscrip- 
tion, "commouplace person." 

But what applies to intellectual capacity will not apply 
to moral qualities, to character. It is more difficult to 
discern its physiognomy, because, being of a metaphysical 
nature, it lies incomparably deeper. It is true that 
moral character is also connected with the constitution, 
with the organism, but not so immediately or in such 
direct connection with definite parts of its system as i? 



258 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

intellectual capacity. Hence while every one makes a 
show of his intelligence and endeavors to exhibit it at 
every opportunity, as something with which he is in 
general quite contented, few expose their moral qualities 
freeiy, and most people intentionally cover them up; and 
long practice makes the concealment perfect. In the 
meantime, as I explained above, wicked thoughts and 
worth* ess efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, 
especially the eves. So that, judging by physiognomy, it 
is easy to warrant that a given man will never produce an 
immortal work; but not that he will never commit a 
great crime. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

For every animal, and more especially for man, a 
certain conformity and proportion between the will and 
the intellect is necessary for existing or making any prog- 
ress in the world. The more precise and correct the 
proportion which nature establishes, the more easy, safe 
and agreeable will be the passage through the world. 
Still, if the right point is only approximately reached, it 
will be enough to ward off destruction. There are, then, 
certain limits within which the said proportion may vary, 
and yet preserve a correct standard of conformity. The 
normal standard is as follows. The object of the intellect 
is to light and lead the will on its path, and therefore, 
the greater the force, impetus and passion, which spurs 
on the will from within, the more complete and luminous 
must be the intellect which is attached to it, that the 
vehement strife of the will, the glow of passion, and the 
intensity of the emotions, may not lead man astray, or 
urge him on to ill considered, false or ruinous action; this 
will, inevitably, be the result, if the will is very violent' 
and the intellect very weak. On the other hand, a 
phlegmatic character, a weak and languid will, can get on 
and hold its own with a small amount of intellect; what 
is naturally moderate needs only moderate support. The 
general tendency of a want of proportion between the will 
and the intellect, in other words, of any variation from 
the normal proportion I 'nave mentioned, is' to produce 
unhappiness, whether it be that the will' is greater than 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSER VATIONS. £59 

the intellect, or the intellect greater than the will, 
Especially is this the case when the intellect is developed 
to an abnormal degree of strength and superiority, so as 
to be out of all proportion to the will, a condition which 
is the essence of real genius; the intellect is then not 
only more than enough for the needs and aims of life, it 
is absolutely prejudicial to them. The result is that, in 
youth, excessive energy in grasping the objective world, 
accompanied by a vivid imagination and a total lack of ex- 
perience, makes the mind susceptible, and an easy prey to 
extravagant ideas, nay, even to chimeras; and this issues 
in an eccentric and fantastic character. And when, in 
later years, this state of mind yields and passes away 
under the teaching of experience, still the genius never 
feels himself at home in the common world of every day 
und the ordinary business of life; he will never take his 
place in it, and accommodate himself to it as accurately as 
the person of normal intellect; he will be more likely to 
make curious mistakes. For the ordinary mind feels 
itself so completely at home in the narrow circle of its 
ideas and views of the world that no one can get the better 
of it in that sphere; its faculties remain true to their 
original purpose, viz., to promote the service of the will; 
it devotes itself steadfastly to this end, and abjures ex- 
travagant aims. The genius, on the other hand, is at bottom 
a monstnim per excessum just as, conversely, the passionate, 
violent and unintelligent man, the brainless barbarian, is 
a monstrum per defectum. 



The will to live, which forms the inmost core of every 
living oeing, exhibits itself most conspicuously in the 
higher order of animals, that is, the cleverer ones; and so 
in them the nature of the will may be seen and examined 
most clearly. For in the lower orders its activity is not 
so evident; it has a lower degree of objectivation; whereas, 
in the class which stands above the higher order of animals, 
that is, in men, reason enters in; and with reason comes 
discretion, and with discretion, the capacity for dissimula- 
tion, which throws a veil over the operations of the will. 
And in mankind, consequently, the will appears without 
its mask only in the affections and the passions. And 
this is the reason wny passion, when it speaks, always 



260 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

wins credence, no matter what the passion may be; and 
rightly so. For the same reason the passions are the main 
theme of poets and the stalking horse of actors. The 
conspicnousness of the will in the lower order of animals 
explains the delight we take in dogs, apes, cats, etc,; it is 
the entirely naive way in which they express themselves 
that gives us so much pleasure. 

The sight of any free animal going about its business 
undisturbed, seeking its food, or looking after its young., 
or mixing in the company of its kind, all the time being 
exactly what it ought to be and can be — what a strange 
pleasure it gives us ! Even if it is only a bird, I can 
watch it for a long time with delight; or a water rat or a 
hedgehog; or better still, a weasel, a deer or a stag. 
The main reason why we take so much pleasure in looking 
at animals is that we like to see our own nature in such a 
simplified form. There is only one mendacious being in 
the world, and that is man. Every other is true and 
sincere, and makes no attempt to conceal what it is, ex* 
pressing its feelings just as they are. 



Many things are put down to the force of habit which 
are rather to be attributed to the constancy and immu- 
tability of orginal, innate character, according to which 
under like circumstances we always do the same thing: 
whether it happens for the first or the hundredth time, it 
is in virtue of the same necessity. Real force of habit, as 
a matter of fact, rests upon that indolent, passive disposi- 
tion which seeks to relieve the intellect and the will of a 
fresh choice, and so makes us do what we did yesterday 
and have done a hundred times before, and of which we 
know that it will attain its object. 

But the truth of the matter lies deeper, and a more 
precise explanation of it can be given than appears at 
first sight. Bodies which may be moved by mechanical 
means only are subject to the power of inertia; and 
applied to bodies which may be acted on by motives, 
this power becomes the force of habit. The actions 
which we perform by mere habit come about, in fact, 
without any individual separate motive brought into 
play for the particular case: hence in performing them, 
•ve really do not think about them. A motive was pres- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSER VA TIONS. 261 

en t only on the first few occasions on which the action 
happened, which has since become a habit: the secondary 
after-effect of this motive is the present habit, and it is 
sufficient to enable the action to continue: just as when a 
body has been set in motion by a push, it requires no 
more pushing in order to continue its motion; it will go 
on to all eternity, if it meets with no friction. It is the 
same in the case of animals: training is a habit which is 
forced upon them. The horse goes on drawing his cart 
quite contentedly, without having to be urged on: the 
motion is the continued effect of those strokes of the whip 
which urged him on at first: by the law of inertia they 
have become perpetuated as habit. All this is really 
more than a mere parable: it is the underlying identity of 
the will at very different degrees of its objectivation, in 
virtue of which the same law of motion takes such 
different forms. 



Vive muchos afios is the ordinary greeting in Spain, 
and all over the earth it is quite customary to wish people 
ft long life. It is presumably not a knowledge of life 
which directs such a wish; it is rather knowledge of what 
man is in his inmost nature, the will to live. 

The wish which every one has that he may be remem- 
bered after his death — a wish which rises to the longing 
for posthumous glory in the case of those whose aims are 
high — seems to me to spring from this clinging to life. 
When the time comes which cuts a man off from every 
possibility of real existence, he strives after a life which is 
still attainable, even though it be a shadowy and ideal 
one. 



The deep grief we feel at the loss of a friend arises 
from the feeling that in every individual there is some- 
thing which no words can express, something which is 
peculiarly his own and therefore irreparable. Omne 
individuum ineffabile. 



"We may come to look upon the death of our enemies 
and adversaries, even long after it has occurred, with 
just as much regret as we feel for that of our friends, 



262 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

viz,, when we miss them as witnesses of our brilliant 
success. 



That the sudden announcement of a very happy event 
may easily prove fatal rests upon the fact that happiness 
and misery depend merely on the proportion which our 
claims bear to what we get. Accordingly, the good things 
we possess, or are certain of getting, are not felt to be 
such; because all pleasure is in fact of a negative nature 
and effects the relief of pain, while pain or evil is what is 
really positive; it is the object of immediate sensation. 
With the possession or certain expectation of good things 
our demand rises, and increases our capacity for further 
possessions and larger expectations. But if we are de- 
pressed by continual misfortune, and our claims reduced 
to a minimum, the sudden advent of happiness finds no 
capacity for enjoying it. Neutralized by an absence of 
pre-existing claims, its effects are apparently positive, 
and so its whole force is brought into play; hence it may 
possibly break our feelings, i. e. be fatal to them. And 
so, as is well known, one must be careful in announcing 
great happiness. First, one must get the person to hope 
for it, then open up the prospect of it, then communicate 
part of it, and at last make it fully known. Every portion 
of the good news loses its efficacy, because it is anticipated 
by a demand, and room is left for an increase in it. In 
view of all this, it may be said that our stomach for good 
fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it is narrow. 
These remarks are not applicable to great misfortunes in 
the same way. They are more seldom fatal, because hope 
always sets itself against them. That an analogous part is 
not played by fear in the case of happiness results from 
the fact that we are instinctively more inclined to hope 
than to fear; just as our eyes turn themselves toward light 
rather than darkness. 



Hope is the result of confusing the desire that some- 
thing should take place with the probability that it will. 
Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the heart, which 
deranges the intellect's correct appreciation of probability 
to such an extent that, if the chances are a thousand to 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 263 

oue against it, yet the event is thought a likely one. 
Still in spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death- 
stroke, while a hope that is always disappointed and still 
never dies, is like death by prolonged torture. 

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is 
the meaning of the expression " desperate/' It is 
natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be true, and 
to believe it because he wishes it. If this characteristic 
of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, is rooted 
out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes, 
conversely, to a condition in which he believes a thing 
must happen because he does not wish it, and what he 
wishes to happen can never be, just because he wishes it, 
this is in reality the state described as "desperation." 



That we are so often deceived in others is not because 
our judgment is at fault, but because in general, as Bacon 
says, " Iniellectus luminis sioci non est, seel recipit infu- 
sionem a voluntate et affectibus: " that is to say, trifles 
unconsciously bias us for or against a person from the 
"ery beginning. It may also be explained by our not 
abiding by the qualities which we really discover; we go 
on to conclude the presence of others which we think 
inseparable from them, or the absence of those which we 
consider incompatible. For instance, when we perceive 
generosity, we infer justice; from piety, we infer honesty; 
from lying, deception; from deception, stealing, etc; a 
procedure which opens the door to many false views, 
partly because human nature is so strange, partly because 
our stand-point is so one-sided. It is true, indeed, that 
character always forms a consistent and connected whole; 
but the roots of all its qualities lie too deep to allow of 
our concluding from particular data in a given case 
whether certain qualities can or cannot exist together. 



We often happen to say things that may in some way 
or other be prejudicial to us; but we keep silent about 
things that might make us look ridiculous; because in this 
case effect follows very quickly on cause. 



264: PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

The pain of an unfulfilled wish is small in comparison 
with that of repentance; for the one stands in the pres< 
ence of the vast open future, while the other has thr 
irrevocable past closed behind it. 



Geduld, patientia, patience, especially the Spanish 
sufrimiento, is strongly connected with the notion of 
suffering. It is therefore a passive state, just as the 
opposite is an active state of the mind, with which, when 
great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate virtue 
of phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people, as also of 
women. But that it is nevertheless so very useful and 
necessary is a sign that the world is very badly consti- 
tuted. 



Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, 
who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in 
the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money. 



Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the 
place of the intellect. 



If you want to find out your real opinion of any one, 
observe the impression made upon you by the first sight 
of a letter from him. 



The course of our individual life and the events in it, 
as far as their true meaning and connection is concerned, 
may be compared to a piece of rough mosaic. So long as 
you stand close in front of it, you cannot get a right view 
of the objects presented, nor perceive their significance or 
beauty. Both come in sight only when you stand a little 
way off. And in the same way you often understand the 
true connection of important events in your life not while 
they are going on nor soon after they are past, but only 
a considerable time afterward. 

Is this so, because we require the magnifying effect of 
imagination? or because we can get a general view onlj 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 205 

from a distance? or because the school of experience 
makes our judgment ripe? Perhaps all of these together: 
but it is certain that we often view in the right light th« 
actions of others, and occasionally even our own, only 
after the lapse of years. And as it is in one's own life, so 
it is in historv. 



Happy circumstances in life are like certain groups 
of trees. Seen from a distance they look very well: but 
go up to them and among them, and the beauty vanishes; 
you don't know where it can be; it is only trees you see. 
And so it is that we often envy the lot of others. 



The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the 
lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the 
stupidity. 

A person of phlegmatic disposition who is a block head, 
would with a sanguine nature, be a fool. 



Now and then one learns something, but one forgett 
the whole day long. 

Moreover our memory is like a sieve, the holes of which 
in time get larger and larger; the older we get, the 
quicker anything intrusted to it slips from the memory, 
whereas, what was fixed fast in it in early days is there 
still. The memory of an old man gets clearer and clearer, 
the further it goes back, and less clear the nearer it 
approaches the present time; so that his memory, like his 
eyes, becomes long-sighted. 



In the process of learning you may be apprehensive 
about bewildering and confusing the memory, but not 
about overloading it, in the strict sense of the word. 
The faculty for remembering is not diminished in pro- 
portion to what one has learned, just as little as the num- 
ber of molds in which youcastsand, lessens its capacity for 
being cast in new molds. In this sense the memory is 
bottomless. And yet the greater and more various any 



266 PSYCHO LOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

one's knowledge, the longer he takes to find out anything 
that may suddenly be asked him; because he is like a 
shopkeeper who has to get the article wanted from a large 
and multifarious store; or, more strictly speaking, because 
out of many possible trains of thought he has to recall 
exactly that one which, as a result of previous training, 
leads to the matter in question. For the memory is not 
0, repository of things you wish to preserve, but a mere 
dexterity of the intellectual powers; hence the mind 
always contains its sum of knowledge only potentially, 
never actually. 

It sometimes happens that my memory will not re- 
produce some word in a foreign language, or a name, or 
some artistic expression, although I know it very well. 
After I have bothered myself in vain about it for a longer 
or a shorter time, I give up thinking about it altogether. 
An hour or two afterward, in rare cases even later still, 
sometimes only after four or five weeks, the word I was 
trying to recall occurs to me while I am thinking of some- 
thing else, as suddenly as if some one had whispered it to 
me. After noticing this phenomenon with wonder for 
very many years, I have come to think that the probable 
explanation of it is as follows. After the troublesome 
and unsuccessful search, my will retains its craving to 
know the word, and so sets a watch for it in the intellect. 
Later on, in the course and play of thought, some word 
by chance occurs having the same initial letters or some 
other resemblance to the word which is sought; then the 
sentinel springs forward and supplies what is wanting to 
make up the word, seizes it, and suddenly brings it up in 
triumph, without my knowing where and how he got it; 
so it seems as if some one had whispered it to me. It is 
the same process as that adopted by a teacher toward a 
child who cannot repeat a word: the teacher just suggests 
the first letter of the word, or even the second too; then 
the child remembers it. In default of this process, you 
can end by going methodically through all the letters of 
the alphabet. 



In the ordinary man, injustice rouses a passionate desire 
for vengeance; and it has often been said that vengeance 
is sweet. How many sacrifices have been made just to 



PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 267 

enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without any intention of 
causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one has 
suffered. The bitter death of the centaur Nessus was 
sweetened by the certainty that he had used his last 
moments to work out an extremely clever vengeance. 
Walter Scott expresses the same human inclination in 
language as true as it is strong: i( Vengeance is the 
sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell!* 
I shall now attempt a psychological explanation of it. 

Suffering which falls to our lot in the course of nature, 
or by chance, or fate, does not, ceteris paribus, seem so 
painful as suffering which is inflicted on us by the 
arbitrary will of another. This is because we look upon 
nature and chance as the fundamental masters of the 
world; we see that the blow we received from them might 
just as well have fallen on another. In the case of 
suffering which springs from this source, we bewail the 
common lot of humanity rather ohan our own misfortune. 
But that it is the arbitrary will of another which inflicts 
the suffering, is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or 
injury it causes, viz., the consciousness that some one else 
is superior to us, whether by force or cunning, while we 
lie helpless. If amends are possible, amends heal the 
injury; but that bitter addition, "and it was you who 
did that to me," which is often more painful than the 
injury itself, is only to be neutralized by vengeance. 
By inflicting injury on the one who has injured us, 
whether we do it by force or cunning, is to show our 
superiority to him, and to annul the proof of his superiority 
to us. That gives our hearts the satisfaction toward 
which it yearns. So where there is a great deal of pride 
or vanity, there also will there be a great desire of ven- 
geance. But as the fulfillment of every wish brings with 
it more or less of a sense of disappointment, so it is with 
vengeance. The delight we hope to get from it is mostly 
embittered a by compassion. Vengeance taken will often 
tear the heart and torment the conscience: the motive to 
it is no longer active, and what remains is the evidence of 
our malice. 



268 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

When the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion, 
reason is totally incompetent and blind, and its use to 
*>e reprehended, it is in reality attesting the fact that these 
logmas are allegorical in their nature, and are not to be 
judged by the standard which reason, taking all things 
sensu proprio* can alone apply. Now the absurdities of a 
dogma are just the mark and sign of what is allegorical 
anu mythical in it. In the case under consideration, 
however, the absurdities spring from the fact that two 
such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and New 
Testaments had to be combined, The great allegory was 
of gradual growth. Suggested by external and adventi- 
tious circumstances, it was developed by the interpretation 
put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touch w r ith 
certain deep-lying truths only half realized. The allegory 
was finally completed by Augustine, who penetrated 
deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as 
a systematic whole and supply its defects. Hence the 
Augustinian doctrine, confirmed by Luther, is the com- 
plete form of Christianity; and the Protestants of to-day, 
who take Revelation sensu proprio and confine it to a 
single individual, are in error in looking upon the first 
beginnings of Christianity as its most perfect expression. 
But the bad thing about all religions is that, instead of 
being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to 
conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrines in all 
seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as absurdities from 
an essential part of these doctrines, you have the great 
mischief of a continual fraud* And, what is worst, the 
iay arrives when they are no longer true sensu proprio, 
md then there is an end of them; so that, in that respect, 
it would be better to admit their allegorical nature at 
once. But the difficulty is to teach the multitude that 
something can be both true and untrue at the same time. 
And as all religions are in a greater or less degree of this 
nature, we must recognize the fact that mankind cannot 
get on without a certain amount of absurdity, that absurd- 
ity is au element in its existence, and illusion indispen- 
sable; as indeed other aspects of life testify. 

I have said that the combination of the Old Testament 
with the New gives rise to absurdities. Among the 8X- 



THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 269 

amples which illustrate what I mean, I may cite the 
Christian doctrine of Predestination and Grace, as for- 
mulated by Augustiue and adopted from him by Luther; 
iccordiug to which one man is endowed with grace and 
mother is not. Grace, then comes to be a privilege 
received at birth and brought ready into the world; a 
Drivilege, too, in a matter second to none in importance. 
What is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine may be 
traced to the idea contained in the Old Testament, that 
man is the creation of an external will, which called him 
into existence out of nothing. It is quite true that 
genuine moral excellence is really innate; but the meaning 
of the Christian doctrine is expressed in another and more 
rational way by the theory of metempsychosis, common 
to Brahmans and Buddhists. According to this theory, 
the qualities which distinguish one man from another are 
received at birth, are brought, that is to say, from another 
world and a former life; these qualities are not an external 
gift of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed in 
that other world. But Augustine's dogma of Predestina- 
tion is connected with another dogma, namely, that the 
mass of humanity is corrupt and doomed to eternal 
damnation, that very few will be found righteous and 
attain salvation, and that only in consequence of the gift 
of grace, and because they are predestined to be saved; 
while the remainder will be overwhelmed by the perdition 
they have deserved, viz., eternal torment in hell. Taken 
in its ordinary meaning, the dogma is revolting, for it 
comes to this; it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, 
scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even 
his unbelief, in everlasting torment; nay, more, it makes 
»hia almost universal damnation the natural effect of 
original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of 
;he Fall. This is a result which must have been foreseen 
Dy him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, 
made them not better than they are, and secondly, set a 
trap for them into which he must have known they would 
fall; for he made the whole world, and nothing is hidden 
from him. According to this doctrine, then, God created 
out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give 
them over to endless torment. And, as a last character- 
istic, we are told that this God, who prescribes forbear- 
ance and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, 



370 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

but does the exact opposite; for a punishment which 
comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and 
done with, cannot have for its object either to improve or 
deter, and is therefore pure vengeance. So that, on this 
view, the whole race is actually destined to eternal torture 
and damnation, and created expressly for this end, the 
only exception being those few persons who are rescued 
by election of grace, from what motive one does not 
know. 

Putting these aside, it looks as if the Blessed Lord had 
created the world for the benefit of the devil! it would 
have been so much better not have made it at all. So 
much, then, for a dogma taken sensu proprio. But look 
at it sensu allegorico, and the whole matter becomes 
capable of a satisfactory interpretation. What is absurd 
and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the 
simple outcome of Jewish theism, with its " creation out 
of nothing," and the really foolish and paradoxical denial 
of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in 
that idea, a doctrine which is natural, to a certain extent 
self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted 
by nearly the whole human race at all times. To remove 
the enormous evil arising from Augustine's dogma, and to 
modify its revolting nature, Pope Gregory I., in the sixth 
century, very prudently matured the doctrine of Purga- 
tory, the essence of which already existed in Origen (cf. 
Bayle's article on Origen, note B.). The doctrine was 
regularly incorporated into the faith of the church, so 
that the original view was much modified, and a certain 
substitute provided for the doctrine of metempsychosis; 
for both the one and the other admit a process of purifi- 
cation. To the same end, the doctrine of "the Restora- 
tion of all things " (<x7i:oxaraT6rd6.is) was established, 
according to which, in the last act of the Human Comedy, 
the sinners one and all will be reinstated in integrum. 
It is only Protestants, with their obstinate belief in the 
Bible, who cannot be induced to give up eternal punish- 
ment in hell. If one were spiteful, one might say, 
14 much good may it do them/' but it is consoling to think 
./hat they really do not believe the doctrine; they leave it 
'^one, thinking in their hearts, "It can't be so bad as all 
*hat." 

The rigid and systematic character of his mind led 



THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 271 

Augustine, in his austere dogmatism and his resolute 
definition of doctrines only just indicated in the Bible 
and, as a matter of fact, resting on very vague grounds, 
to give hard outlines to these doctrines and to put a harsh 
construction on Christianity: the result of which is that 
his views offend us, and just as in his day Pelagianism 
arose to combat them, so now in our day Rationalism doea 
the same. Take, for example, the case as he states it 
generally in the " De Civitate Dei." Bk. xii. ch. 21. It 
comes to this: God creates a being out of nothing, forbids 
him some things, and enjoins others upon him; and 
because these commands are not obeyed, lie tortures him 
to all eternity with every conceivable anguish; and for 
this purpose, binds soul and body inseparably together, so 
that, instead of the torment destroying this being by 
splitting him up into his elements, and so setting him 
free, he may live to eternal pain. This poor creature, 
formed out of nothing! At least, he has a claim on his 
original nothing: he should be assured, as a matter of 
right, of this last retreat, which, in any case, cannot be a 
very evil one: it is what he has inherited. I, at any rate, 
cannot help sympathizing with him. 1/ you add to this 
Augustine's remaining doctrines, that all this does not 
depend on the man's own sins and omissions, but was 
already predestined to happen, one really is at a loss what 
to think. Our highly educated Rationalists say, to be 
sure, " It's all false, it's a mere bugbear; we're in a state 
of constant progress, step by step raising ourselves to ever 
greater perfection." Ah! what a pity we didn't begin 
sooner; we should already be there. 

In the Christian system the devil is a personage of the 
greatest importance. God is described as absolutely good, 
wise and powerful; and unless he were counterbalanced 
by the devil, it would be impossible to see where the in- 
numerable and measureless evils, which predominate in 
the world, come from, if there were no devil to account 
for them. And since the Rationalists have done away 
with the devil, the damage inflicted on the other side has 
gone on growing, and is becoming more and more 
palpable: as might have been foreseen, and was foreseen, 
by the orthodox. The fact is, you cannot take away one 
pillar from a building without endangering the rest of it. 



272 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

And this confirms the view, which has been established on 
other grounds, that Jehovah is a transformation of 
Ormuzd, and Satan of the Ahriman who must be taken in 
connection with him. Ormnzd himself is a transforma- 
tion of Indra. 

Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that, un- 
like other religions, it is not a pure system* of doctrine: 
'ts chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a 
series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the 
actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history 
which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation. 
Other religions, Buddhism, for instance, have, it is true, 
historicalappendages, the life, namely of their founders: 
this, however, is not part and parcel of the dogma, but is 
taken along with it. For example, the Lalitavistara may 
be compared with the Gospel so far it contains the life of 
Sakya-muni, the Buddha of the present period of the 
world's history: but this is something which is quite 
separate and different from the dogma, from the system 
itself: and for this reason; the lives of former Buddhas 
were quite other, and those of the future will be quite 
other, than the life of the Buddha of to-day. The dogma 
is by no means one with the career of its founder; it does 
not rest on individual persons or events; it is something 
universal and equally valid at all times. The Lalitavistara 
is not, then, a gospel in the Christian sense of the word; 
it is not the joyful message of an act of redemption; it is 
the career of him who has shown how each one may redeem 
himself. The historical constitution of Christianity 
makes the Chinese laugh at missionaries as story-tellers. 

I may mention here another fundamental error of 
Christianity, an error which cannot be explained away, 
and the mischievous consequences of which are obvious 
every day: I mean the unnatural distinction Christianity 
makes between man and the animal world to which he 
really belongs. It sets up man as all-important, and looks 
upon animals as merely things. Brahmanism, and 
Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognize 
in a positive way that man is related generally to the 
whole of nature, and specially and principally to animal 
nature; and in their systems man is always represented, by 
the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely 



THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 273 

connected with the animal world. The important part 
played by animals all through Buddhism and Brahmanism, 
compared with the total disregard of them in Judaism and 
Christianity, puts an end to any question as to which 
system is nearer perfection, however much we in Europe 
may nave become accustomed to the absurdity of the 
claim. Christianity contains, in fact, a great and 
essential imperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and 
in refusing rights to the entire animal world. As religion 
fails to protect animals against the rough, unfeeling anc 7 
often more than bestial multitude, the duty falls to the 
police; and as the police are unequal to the task, societies 
for the protection of animals are now formed all over Europe 
and America. In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a 
procedure would be the most superfluous thing in the 
world, because animals are there sufficiently protected by 
religion, which even makes them objects of charity. 
How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to 
take an example, in the great hospital for animals at 
Surat, whither Christians, Mohammedans and Jews can 
send their sick beasts, which, if cured, are very rightlj 
not restored to their owners. In the same way, when a 
Brahman or Buddhist has a slice of good luck a happy 
issue in any affair, instead of mumbling a Te Deum, he 
goes to the market place and buys birds and opens their 
cages at the city gate; a thing which may be frequently 
seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion 
meet together: and so on in a hundred similar ways. 
On the other hand, look at the revolting ruffianism with 
which our Christian public treats its animals; killing them 
for no object at all, and laughing over it, or mutilating 
or torturing them: even its horses, who form its most 
direct means of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in 
their old age, and the last strength worked out of their 
poor bones until they succumb at last under the whip 
One might say with truth, Maukind are the devils or 
the earth, and the animals the souls they torment. But 
what can you expect from the masses, when there are men of 
education, zoologists even, who, instead of admitting what 
is so familiar to them, the essential identity of man and 
animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to offer a zealous 
opposition to their honest and rational colleagues, when 
they class man under the proper head as an animal, or 



274 TEK CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

demonstrate the resemblance between him and the 
chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a revolting thing 
that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his senti- 
ments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his 
"Scenen aus dem Geisterreieh." (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.) 
"Suddenly the skeleton shriveled up into an indescribably 
hideous and dwarf-like form, just as when you bring a 
large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch 
the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat.' v This 
man of God then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on 
quietly when another was committing it! in either case it 
comes to the same thing here. So little harm did he 
think of it that he tells us of it in passing, and without a 
trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter 
of Genesis, and. in fact, of the whole of the Jewish con- 
ception of nature. The standard recognized by the 
Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word) 
— " tat-twam-asi," (this is thyself), which may always be 
spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity 
of his inmost being with ours. Perfection of morality, 
iudeed! Xonsense. 

The fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religion 
are realism and optimism, views of the world which are 
closely allied; they form, in fact, the conditions of theism. 
For theism looks upon the material world as absolutely 
real, and regards life as a pleasant gift bestowed upon us. 
On the other hand, the fundamental characteristics of the 
Brahman and Buddhist religions are idealism and 
pessimism, which look upon the existence of the world as 
in the nature of a dream, and life as the result of our 
sins. In the doctrines of the Zendavesta. from which, as 
is well known, Judaism sprang, the pessimistic, element is 
represented by Ahriman. In Judaism, Ahriman has 
as Satan only a subordinate position; but. like Ahriman, 
he is the lord of snakes, scorpions, and vermin. But the 
Jewish system forthwith employs Satan to correct its 
fundamental error of optimism, and in the Fall introduces 
the element of pessimism, a doctrine demanded by the 
most obvious facts of the world. There is no truer idea 
in Judaism than this, although it transfers to the course 
of existence what must be represented as its foundation 
and antecedent. 



THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 275 

The New Testament, on the other hand, must be in 
gome way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, 
its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, 
are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places 
it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagon- 
ism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is 
the only possible point of connection between the two. 
For when the Indian doctrine was imported into the land 
af promise, two very different things had to be combined: 
on the one hand the consciousness of the corruption and 
misery of the world, its need of deliverance and salvation 
through an Avatar, together with a morality based on 
self-denial and repentance; on the other hand the Jewish 
doctrine of Monotheism, with its corollary that "all things 
are very good" (itavra uaXa Mav.) And the task 
succeeded as far as it could, as far, that is, as it was 
possible to combine two such heterogeneous and antago- 
nistic creeds. 

As ivy clings for the support and stay it wants to a 
rough-hewn post, everywhere conforming to its irregulari- 
ties and showing their outline, but at the same time 
covering them with life and grace, and changing the 
former aspect into one that is pleasing to the eye; so the 
Christian faith, sprung from the wisdom of India, over- 
spreads the old trunk of rude Judaism, a tree of alien 
growth; the original form must in part remain, but it 
suffers a complete change and becomes full of life and 
truth, so tnat it appears to be the same tree, but is really 
another. 

Judaism had represented the Creator as separated from 
the world, which he produced out of nothing. Chris- 
tianity identifies this Creator with the Saviour, and 
through him, with humanity: he stands as their represen- 
tative; they are redeemed in him, just as they fell in 
Adam, and have lain ever since in the bonds of iniquity, 
corruption, suffering and death. Such is the view taken 
by Christianity in common with Buddhism: the world 
can no longer be looked at in the light of Jewish optimism, 
which found "all things very good:" nay, in the Chris- 
tian scheme, the devil is named as its Prince or Ruler, 
(5 apxoovir rov Kodjuov rovrov. John 12, 33). The world w 
no longer an end, but a means; and the realm of ever- 
blasting joy lies beyond it and the grave. Resignation in 



276 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 

this world and direction of all our hopes to a better form 
the spirit of Christianity. The way to this end is opened 
by the Atonement, that is, the Redemption from this 
world and its ways. And in the moral system, instead of 
the law of vengeance, there is the command to love your 
snemy; instead of the promise of innumerable posterity, 
he assurance of eternal life; instead of visiting the sins 
of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth 
generations, the Holy Spirit which over-shadows all. • 

We see, then, that the doctrines of the Old Testament 
are rectified and their meaning changed by those of the 
New, so that, in the most important and essential matters, 
*n agreement is brought about between them and the old 
religions of India. Everything which is true in Chris- 
tianity may also be found in Brahmanism and Buddhism. 
But in Hinduism and Buddhism you will look in vain for 
any parallel to the Jewish doctrines of "a nothing quick- 
ened into life," or of " a world made in time," which, 
cannot be humble enough in its thanks and praises to 
Jehovah for an ephemeral existence full of misery, anguish 
and need. 

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have 
ever given our race information as to the aim of its 
existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood. 
There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the 
wise, even though these thoughts, liable to error as is the 
lot of everything human, are often clothed in strange 
allegories and myths under the name of religion. So far, 
then, it is a matter of indifference whether a man lives 
and dies in reliance on his own or another's thoughts; for 
it is never more than human thought, human opinion, 
which he trusts. Still, instead of trusting what their own 
minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trust- 
ing others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowl- 
edge. And in view of the enormous intellectual 
inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that the 
thoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense a 
revelation to another. 



A BRIEF DIALOG UE. 277 

THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY : 



A BRIEF DIALOGUE. 

A. Philosophy has hitherto been a failure. It could 
not, indeed, have been otherwise; because, instead of 
confining himself to the better understanding of the world 
as given in experience, the philosopher has aspired to pass 
at one bound beyond it, in the hope of discovering the 
last foundation of all existence and the eternal relations 
of things. Now these are matters which our intellect is 
quite incapable of grasping. Its power of comprehension 
never reaches beyond what philosophers call "finite 
things," or, as they sometimes say, "phenomena;" in 
short, just the fleeting shadows of this world, and the 
interests of the individual, the furtherance of his aims 
and the maintenance of his person. And since our 
intellect is thus immanent, our philosophy should be 
immanent too, and not soar to supramundane things, but 
be content with gaining a thorough grasp of the world of 
experience. It surely provides matter enough for such a 
study. 

B. If that is so, intellect is a miserable present for 
Nature to give us. According to your view, the mind 
serves only to grasp the relations that constitute our 
wretched existence as individuals — relations which cease 
with the brief span of our temporal life; and is utterly 
unsuited to face those problems which are alone worthy 
to interest a thinking being — what our existence really is, 
and what the world means as a whole; in short, how we 
are to solve the riddle of this dream of life. If all this is 
so, and our mind could never grasp these things even 
though they were explained to it, then I cannot see that 
it is worth my while to educate my mind, or to pay an) 
attention to it at all; it is a thing unworthy of any 
respect. 

A. My dear sir, if we wrangle with Nature, we are 
usually in the wrong. For Nature does nothing that 
is useless or in vain — nihil facit frustra nee snpervacan- 
eum. We are only temporal, finite, fleeting beings 
creatures of a dream: and our existence passes away like 
a shadow. What do we want with an intellect to grasp 



278 TEE FAIL URE OF PH1L0S0PEY. 

things that are infinite, eternal, absolute? And how 
should such an intellect ever leave the consideration of 
these high matters to apply itself again to the small facts 
of onr ephemeral life — the facts that are the only realities 
for us and our proper concern? How could it ever be of 
any use for them again? If nature had bestowed this 
intellect upon us, the gift would not only have been an 
immense mistake and quite in vain; it would even have 
conflicted with the very aims that nature has designed for 
us. For what good do we do, as Shakespeare says, 

" We fools of nature, 
So "horridly to shake our disposition 
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls."* 

If we had this perfect, this all embracing, metaphysical 
insight, should we be capable of any physical insight 
at all, or of going about our proper business? Kay, it 
might plunge us forever into a state of chill horror, like 
that of one who has seen a ghost. 

B. But surely in all this you are making a notorious 
petitio principii. In saying that we are merely temporal, 
fleeting, finite beings, you beg the whole question. We 
are also infinite, eternal, and the original principle of 
nature itself. Is it not then well worth our while to go 
on trying if we cannot fathom nature after all — ob nicht 
Natur zuletzt sick dock ergrunde? 

A. Yes; but according to your own philosophy we are 
Infinite and eternal, only in a certain sense. We are in- 
finite and eternal not as phenomena, but as the original 
principle of nature; not as individuals, but as the inmost 
essence of the world; not because we are subjects of 
knowledge, but merely as manifestations of the will to 
live. The qualities of which you speak are qualities that 
have to do with intelligence, not will. As intelligent 
beings we are individual and finite. Our intellect, then, 
is also of this character. The aim of our life, if I may 
use a metaphorical expression, is a practical, not a 
theoretical one; our actions, not our knowledge, appertain 
to eternity. The use of the intellect is to guide oui 
notions, and at the same time to ho'd up the mirror to our 
will; and this is, in effect, what it does. If the intellect 



* " Hamlet," L, Sc. 4. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 279 

Aad more to do, it would very probably become unfit even 
:or this. Think how a small superfluity of intellect is a 
bar to the career of the man endowed with it. Take the 
case of genius: while it may be an inward blessing to its 
possessor, it may also make him very unhappy in his 
;elations with the world.* 

B. Good, that you reminded me of genius. To some 
jxtent it upsets the facts you are trying to vindicate. 
A genius is a man whose theoretical side enormously out- 
weighs his practical. Even though he cannot grasp 
eternal relations, he can see a little deeper into the things 
of this world; attamen est qiiodam prodire tenus. It is 
quite true that this does render the intellect of genius less 
fit to grasp the finite things of earth; just as a telescope 
is a good thing, but not in a theater. Here we seem to 
have reached a point where we agree, and we need not 
pursue the subject further. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 

The real problem in the philosophy of art may be 
very simply stated thus: How is it possible to take 
pleasure in something that does not come into any relation 
with the will? 

Let me put this more fully. It is commonly felt that 
pleasure and enjoyment in a thing can arise only when it 
comes into some relation with our will, or, as we prefer 
to say, when it serves some end which we have in view. 
If this were so, it would seem to be a contradiction to 
talk of pleasure which did not involve bringing the will 
into play. And yet it is quite obvious that we derive 
pleasure and enjoyment from the beautiful as such, quite 
apart from any connection it may have with our personal 
aims, or, in other words, with our will. 

This problem I have solved in the following way: by 
the beautiful we mean the essential and original forms 
of animate and inanimate nature — in Platonic language, 

* Translator's Note. — This is a favorite remark of Schopenhauer's. 
Some account of his interesting theory of Genius touched upon at 
;be conclusion of this dialogue may be found in the concluding 
->ection of this volume emitted: " The Art o* Literature." 



2»0 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 

the Ideas; and they can be apprehended only by theii 
essential correlate, a knowing subject free from \rl!!j 
in other words, a pure intelligence without purpose or 
ends in view. Hence in the act of aesthetic perception **** 
will has absolutely no place in consciousness. But i^ ; s 
the will alone which is the fount of all our sorrows 2*:t 
sufferings, and if it thus vanishes from consciousness, the 
whole possibility of suffering is taken away. This I* : s 
that explains the feeling of pleasure which accompanies 
the perception of the beautiful. 

If it should be objected that to take away the poseib' i:< "y 
of suffering is also to take away the possibility of enjoy- 
ment, it should be remembered that, as 1 have often 'ex- 
plained, happiness and satisfaction are negative, in 
their nature; in other words, they are merely freedom 
from suffering; while pain is the positive element of ex- 
istence. So that, when will vanishes from consciousness, 
there yet remains over the state of enjoyment: that is to 
say, the state in which there is a complete absence, not 
onlv of pain, but in this case, even of the very possibility 
of it. 

To be freed from one's self is what is meant by becoming 
a pure intelligence. It consists in forgetfulness of one's 
own aims and complete absorption in the object of con- 
templation; so that all we are conscious of is this ono 
object. And since this is a state of mind unattainable bj 
most men, they are, as a rule, unfitted for an objective 
attitude toward the world; and it is just this that con- 
stitutes the artistic faculty. 

To the will as it exists in the individual is superadded 
an intellectual faculty, which enables the will to become 
conscious of itself and of the objects about it. This 
intellectual faculty came into being in order to perform 
the service of the will. Now, let us suppose that the will 
sets the intellect at liberty for awhile and grants it a full 
release from its service, so that the intellect may for the 
moment dismiss its concern for the will; in other words, 
abandon the personal service which forms its only natural 
task, and, therefore, its regular occupation. If, at the 
same time that it is thus released, the intellect does not 
cease to be active and energetic, and use every endeavor to 
arrive at a clear apprehension of the world, it becomes 
completely objective; that is to say, it becomes a faithful 
minor of the rJ3j.11.gs about it. 



TEE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART 281 

It is only in this way, with a pure intelligence at 
subject, that the object, pure and simple, can come into 
existence. For this postulated relation between subject 
and object to arise at all, it is necessary that the intel- 
lectual faculty should not only be withdrawn from its 
original service and be left altogether to itself, but also 
that, when released, it should nevertheless preserve its 
whole energy of activity; in spite of the fact that the 
stimulus of this activity, the impulse of the will, is now 
absent. 

Therein lies the difficulty, and this is just why tnj 
condition of mind necessary in artistic creation is so rare; 
because all our thoughts and endeavors, our powers of 
sight and hearing, are always naturally exerted, directly 
or indirectly, in the service of our numerous personal 
aims, great and small. It is the will that drives the 
intellect to the fulfillment of its function, and the in- 
tellect flags at once if the spur is withdrawn. Rendered 
active in this way, the intellect is perfectly sufficient for 
the needs of practical life, nay, even for the kind of 
knowledge required in professional business. For there 
the aim is to understand only the relations of things, not 
the inner reality peculiar to them; and this kind of 
knowledge proceeds by applying such principles of reason- 
ing as govern the relation in which things may stand to one 
another. 

But though in the conception of a work of art the 
intellect is all in all, in the execution of it, where the 
aim is to communicate and represent what has been con- 
ceived, the will may, nay, must become active again; just 
because there is an aim to be carried out. Accordingly, 
in this sphere, the principles of reasoning which govern 
the relations of things again come into play. It is in 
conformity with these principles that the means used by 
art are so contrived as to produce artistic effects. Time 
we find the painter concerned with the accuracy of liu 
drawing and the manipulation of his colors, and the poet 
looking first to the arrangement of his subject and then to 
a right use of expression and the laws of metre. 

In the selection of a theme, both poetry pnd the plastic 
arts take some one individual person or tiling and c*. 
deavor to present it a? a separate entity, with all its 
peculiarities, even down to the minutest, exhibited with 



&% THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 

the most accurate precision. Science, on the other hanu, 
works by the treatment of abstract ideas, every one of 
them representing innumerable individuals; and it pro- 
ceeds to define and mark out the characteristics of these 
ideas, so as to fix them once for all. A comparison 
between these two methods might lead one to suppose 
that art is an insignificant, petty, nay, almost childish 
pursuit. But the nature of art is such that with it one 
case holds good for a thousand; for by a careful anc] 
letailed preservation of a single individual, person or thing, 
it aims at revealing the idea of the genus to which that 
person or thing belongs. Thus some one event or scen§ 
in the life of a man, described with complete truth— i 
described, that is to say, so as to exhibit precisely all the 
individuals which go to make it what it is — gives us a 
clear and profound insight into the idea of humanity 
itself, as seen from this particular point of view. But, in 
spite of this difference of method between science and art, 
there is some similarity in their treatment of single facts. 
For just as the botanist picks a single flower from the 
boundless realm of the vegetable world, and then takes it 
to pieces in order to demonstrate, from the single specimen, 
the nature of the plant itself; so the poet chooses out of 
the endless turmoil of human life as it hurries incessantly 
on its way, some one scene, nay, often only some one 
mood, some one sensation, so that he may show us from it 
what is the life and character of man. 

And thus it is that the greatest minds, Shakespeare and 
Goethe, Raphael and Rembrandt, do not think it un- 
worthy of them to bring some quite ordinary person before 
us — not even one that is anything beyond the common— 
to delineate him with the greatest accuracy, in the en- 
deavor to show him to us in the most minute particularity. 
For it is only when they are put before us in this way 
that we can apprehend individual and particular facts of 
life; and that is why I have defined poetry as the art of 
rousing the imagination by means of words. 

If the reader wishes for a direct example of the advan- 
tage which intuitive knowledge — the primary and funda- 
mental kind — has over abstract thought, as showing that 
art reveals to \cs more than we can gain from all th< 
sciences, let him look at a beautiful human face, full c' 
expressive emotion; and that too whether in nature itself 



THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 283 

or as presented to us by the mediation of art. How much 
deeper is the insight gained into the essential character 
of man, nay, into nature in general, by this sight than by 
all the words and abstract expressions which may be used 
to describe it. When a beautiful face beams with 
laughter, it is as though a fine landscape were suddenly 
illuminated by a ray of light darting from the clouds. 
Therefore rulete, puellcs, rtdete! 

Let me here state the general reason why the idea, in 
the Platonic meaning of the word, may be more easily 
apprehended from a picture than from reality; in other 
language, why a picture makes a nearer approach to the 
idea. A work of art is some objective reality as it appears 
after it has passed through a subject. From this point 
of view, it may be said to bear the same relation to the 
mind as animal food, which is vegetable food already 
assimilated, hears to the body. 

But there is another and deeper reason for the fact in 
question. The product of plastic and pictorial art does 
not present us, as reality does, with something that exists 
once only and then is gone forever — the connection, I 
mean, between this particular matter and this particular 
form. It is this connection which is the essence of any 
concrete individuality, in the strict sense of the word. 
This kind of art shows us the form alone; and this, if it 
were given in its whole entirety, would be the idea. The 
picture, therefore leads us at once from the individual to 
the mere form; and this separation of the form from the 
matter brings the form very much nearer the idea. Now 
every artistic representation, whether painting or statue, 
is just such a separation; and hence this separation, this 
disjunction of the form from the matter is part of the 
character of a work of aesthetic art, because it is just the 
aim of such art to bring us to the knowledge of the idea. 

It is, therefore*, essential to a work of art that it should 
give the form alone without the matter; and, further, that 
it should do so without any possibility of mistake on the 
part of the spectator. This is really the reason why wax fig- 
ures produce no aesthetic impression, and therefore are not, 
in the aesthetic sense, works of art at all; although if they 
were well made, they produce an illusion a hundred times 
greater than the best picture or statue could effect; so that 
if deceptive imitation of reality were the object of art, 



284 TEE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 

they would have to take the first place. For a wax figure 
of a man appears to give not only the mere form but with 
it the matter as well, so that it produces the illusion that 
the man himself is standing before you. The true work of 
art should lead us from the individual fact, in other words, 
that which exists once only, and then is gone forever, to 
,he mere form or the idea — in other w r ords, that which 
always exists an infinite number of times in an infinite 
number of ways. Instead of doing this, the wax figure 
appears to present us with the individual himself — in other 
words, with that which exists once only, and then never 
again; and yet, at the same time, it fails to represent the 
life which gives such a fleeting existence its value. This 
is why a wax figure is repulsive; it is stiff and stark, and 
reminds us of a corpse. 

It might be thought that it is sculpture alone which 
gives form without matter; and that painting gives matter 
as well as form, by making color serve to imitate matter 
and its composition. But this objection would imply that 
form is to be taken in a purely geometrical sense; and that 
is not what is here meant. Form must be taken in the 
philosophical sense of the word, as the opposite of matter; 
and therefore it includes color, surface, texture; in short, 
quality, in whatever it may consist. It is quite true that 
sculpture alone gives form in the purely geometrical sense, 
exhibiting it on a matter which the eye can see to be 
foreign to the form, namely, marble; and in this way the 
form comes to stand by itself so as to strike the eye at 
once. 

But painting does not give matter at all, and it gives 
only the mere appearance of the form, not in the geomet- 
rical, but in the philosophical, sense just described. 
Painting, I say, does not give even the form itself, but 
only the mere appearance of it — that is to say, merely its 
effect on one of our senses, the sense of sight; and that, 
too, only in so far as a particular act of vision is concerned. 
Thi6 is why a picture in oils does not really produce the 
illusion that the thing represented is actually before us, 
both in form and matter. The imitative trnth of a picture 
is always subordinated to certain admitted conditions of 
this method of representation. Thus, by the unavoidable 
suppression of the parallax of our two eyes, a pict?7.rp 
always makes things appear in the way in which a ox\^ 



THE MFTAPBYSICS OF FINE AKT. 285 

eyed person would Gee them. Therefore painting, equally 
with sculpture, gives the form alone; for it presents 
nothing but the effect of the form — an effect confined to 
one of the senses only, namely, that of sight. 

In connection with this subject it is to be observed that 
copper-plates and monochromes answer to a more noble 
and elevated taste than chromographs and water-colors; 
while me latter are preferred by persons of little culture. 
This is obviously due to the fact that pictures in black 
and white give the form alone, the form, as it were, in 
the abstract; and the apprehension of this is, as we know, 
intellectual, in other words, a matter of the intuitive un- 
derstanding. Color, on the other hand, is merely an affair 
of sense, nay more, of a particular arrangement in the organ 
of sight which depends upon the activity of the retina. 
In respect of the taste to which they appeal, colored prints 
may be likened to rhymed, and copper-plates to blank, 
verse. * The union of beauty and grace in the human 
form is the clearest manifestation of the will on the top- 
most stage of its objectivation, and for that very reason 
'the highest achievement of the plastic and pictorial arts. 
But still, everything that is natural is beautiful If there 
are some animals of which we find a difficulty in believing 
this to be true, the reason of it is that we are unable to 
look at them in a purely objective light, so as to appre- 
hend their idea. We are prevented from doing so by some 
unavoidable association of thought, chiefly the result of 
some similarity which forces itself upon our notice; as, for 
instance, the similarity of the ape with man; so that in- 
stead of apprehending the idea of an ape, what we see is the 
caricature of a man. In the same way a toad appears to 
produce an effect upon us similar to that of dirt and slime, 
and yet this is not enough to explain the unbounded aver- 
sion, nay, the feeling of dread and horror, which comes 
over some people at the sight of this animal, as over others 
when they see a spider. The feeling appears to be deeper 
than any mere association can explain, and to be traceable 
to some mysterious fact of a metaphysical nature. 

The inorganic world, so far as it does not consist of 
mere water, produces a very sad, nay, an oppressive effect 
upon the feelings, whenever it is presented to us quite by 

* Cf. Welt als und Vorstellung, Vol II., p. 488. 



286 TEE METAPHYSICS OF FIXE ART 

itself. Examples of what I mean are afforded by districts 
which offer to the eye nothing but a mas3 of bare crags; 
that long valley of rocks, for instance, without a trace of 
vegetation, near Toulon, on the way to Marseilles. The 
Bame effect is produced on a large scale, and in a much 
more striking"degree, by the African desert. The melan- 
choly impression which this kind of scenery makes is 
mainly clue to the fact that masses of inorganic mattei 
obey one law only, the law of gravity; and consequently 
everything is disposed in accordance with it. 

Contrarily, the sight of vegetation produces a feeling of 
direct pleasure, and that too in a high degree; and the 
pleasure is greater in proportion as the vegetation is rich, 
various, luxuriant, and left to itself. The more immediate 
reason of this is that, in the case of vegetation, the law of 
gravity appears to be overcome, as the vegetable world 
tends to move in a direction the exact contrary of that 
taken by gravity. This is, indeed, the direct way in 
which the phenomenon of life announces its presence, as a 
new and higher order of things. It is an order to which 
we ourselves belong; it is something akin to us and the* 
element of our being. And so at the sight of it, our heart 
is moved. That straight upward direction is the source of 
our pleasurable feeling. This is why a fine group of trees 
looks so much better if a few tall tapering pines shoot out 
from the middle of it. On the other hand, a tree that has 
been cut down has lost all its effect upon us: and one that 
grows obliquely has not so much as one that stands straight 
np. 

A tree which bends over the earth with its branches 
obedient to the law of gravity, makes us melancholy; and 
and we call it the weeping willow. 

Water neutralizes in a great measure the oppressive 
effect of its inorganic composition by its exceeding mobil- 
ity, which gives it an appearance of life, and also by its 
constant interplay of light and shade. Besides, water is 
absolutely indispensable for the existence of life. 

But above and beyond this, the pleasurable feeling 
which the sight of vegetable nature gives us, comes from 
that look of rest, peace and satisfaction which it wears; 
while the animal world is mostly presented to us in a 
state of unrest, pain, even of struggle. This explains why 
it is so easy for the sight of vegetation to put us into a 



TSE METAPHYSICS OF FIJSTE ATtTB. 287 

state where we become a pure intelligence, freed from 
ourselves. 

It is a very astonishing thing that vegetation, even 
of the commonest and humblest kind, is no sooner with- 
drawn from the capricious influence of man than it 
straightway groups itself picturesquely and strikes the eye 
as beautiful. This is true of every little spot of earth that 
has been left wild and uncultivated, even though thistles, 
thorns and the commonest flowers of the field were all it 
bore. Where the ground is tilled — in cornfields, for 
instance, and kitchen-garoens, the aesthetic element in the 
vegetable world sinks to a minimum. 

It has long been observed that everything constructed 
for the use of man, whether it is a building or only an 
utensil, must, if it is to be beautiful, preserve a certain 
similarity with the works of Nature. But a mistake has 
been made in thinking that the similarity must directly 
strike the eye and have to do with the shape the thing 
takes; as, for instance, that pillars should represent trees 
or human limbs; that receptacles should be shaped like 
mussels or snail-shells, or the calyx of a flower, and that 
vegetable or animal forms should be met with everywhere 
in Art. 

The similarity should be indirect; that is to say, it should 
fie not in the shape itself, but in its character. One shape 
may differ from another in actual appearance and yet be the 
same in character. Accordingly, buildings and utensils 
should not be imitated from Nature, but should be con- 
structed in the spirit of Nature. This will show itself in a 
perfect adaptation of means to ends, so that the thing itself 
and every part of it may directly proclaim what its purpose 
is. This will be effected when that purpose is attained in the 
snortest way and in the simplest manner. It is just this 
striking conformity to a certain end that stamps the 
products of Nature. 

In Nature the will works from within outward, after 
completely dominating its material. But in Art it works 
from without, by a process of intuition; it may be, by set- 
ting up the abstract idea of the purpose which the object 
of art is to serve; it then attains its end and delivers itself 
of its meaning by impressing it upon some alien material; 
that is to say, some material originally devoted to another 
form of will. Yet for all that, the character I have de- 



288 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ARTS. 

scribed as belonging to a product of Nature may be pre- 
served. This is shown by the ancient style of architecture, 
where every part or member is precisely suited to the pur- 
pose it is immediately meant to serve — a purpose thus 
naively brought into view, and where there is a total absence 
of anything that does not serve some purpose. 

To this is opposed that Gothic style, which owes its mys- 
terious appearance just to the multitude of aimless orna- 
ments and accessories it displays, where we are obliged to 
Ascribe to them some purpose which we cannot discern; 
and again, that quite degenerate style of architecture 
which affects originality by playing, in all sorts of unneces- 
sary and roundabout ways, with the means used for pro- 
ducing artistic effect, dallying capriciously with them, and 
at the same time misunderstanding their aim. 

The same remark holds good of ancient vessels and uten- 
sils, the beauty of which is clue to the fact that they so 
naively express their nature, and the purpose they were 
meant to serve, and so of all other receptacles made by the 
ancients. You feel in looking at them that if Nature had 
produced vases, amphorae, lamps, tables, stools, helmets, 
shields, armor and so on, they would be ma: a in that 
style. 

x\s regards the birth of a work of art in a man's mind, 
if he is only in a susceptible mood, almost any object that 
comes within his range of perception will begin to speak 
to him, in other words, will generate in him some lively, 
penetrating, original thought. So it is that a trivial event 
may become the seed of a great and glorious work. Jacon 
Bdhme is said to have been enlightened upon some deep 
point of natural science by the sudden sight of a tin can.* 

In the end it all depends upon the power a man has in 
himself; and just as no food or medicine will bestow os 
take the place of vital energy, so no book or study can give 
a man a mind of his own. 



THE ART OF LITERATURE 



THE ART OF LITERATURE. 



ON AUTHORSHIP. 

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who 
write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writ- 
ing's sake. While the one have had thoughts or experi- 
ences which seem to them worth communicating, the others 
want money, and so they write for money. Their thinking 
is part of the business of writing. They may be recog- 
nized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to 
the greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature 
of their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, 
forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally 
show to saying anything straight out, so that they may 
seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient 
m clearness and definiteuess, and it is not long before they 
betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover 
paper. This sometimes happens with the best authors: 
now and then, for example, with Lessing in his " Drama- 
turgic," and even in many of Jean Paul's romances. As 
soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw the book 
away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an 
author begins to write for the sake of covering paper he is 
cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext 
that he has something to say. 

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at 
bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything 
that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake 
of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if 
in every branch of literature there were only a few books, 
but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as 
money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the 
money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as 
soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the 
Bake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come 



292 THE ART OF LITERA TURK 

from the time when they had to write for nothing or for 
very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds 
good, which declares that honor and money are not to be 
found in the same purse — honray proveclw no caben en un 
saco. The reason why literature is in such a bad plight 
nowadays is simply and solely that people write books to 
make money. A man who is in want sits down and writes 
a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The 
secondary effect of this is the ruin of language. 

A great many bad writers make their whole living bv 
that foolish mania of the public for reading nothing but 
what has just been prixited — journalists, I mean. Truly, 
a most appropriate name In plain language it is jour- 
neymen, day-laborers! 

Again, it may be said chat there are three kinds of 
authors. First come those who write without thinking. 
They write from a full memory, from reminiscences; it 
may be, even straight out of other people's books. This 
class is the most numerous. Then come those who do 
their thinking whilst they are writing. They think in 
order to write; and there is no lack of them. Last of all 
come those authors who think before they begin to write. 
They are rare. 

Authors of the second class, who put off their thinking 
until they come to write, are like a sportsman who goes 
forth at random and is not likely to bring very much 
home. On the other hand, when an author of the third 
or rare class writes, it is like a battue. Here the game has 
been previously captured and shut up within a very small 
space, from which it is afterward let out, so many at a 
time^ into another space, also confined. The game can- 
not possibly escape the sportsman; he has nothing to do 
but aim and fire — in other words, write down his thoughts. 
This is a kind of sport from which a man has something 
to show. 

But even though the number of those who really thin! 
seriously before they begin to write is small, extremely few 
of them think about the subject itself: the remainder 
think only about the books that have been written on the 
subject, and what has been said by others. In order to 
think at all, such writers need the more direct and power- 
ful stimulus of having other people's thoughts before 
them. These become their immediate theme, and the 



ON A UTHORSHIP. 2Qfi 

result is that they are always under their influence, and so 
never, in any real sense of the word, original. But the 
former are roused to thought by the subject itself, to 
which their thinking is thus immediately directed. This 
is the only class that produces writers of abiding fame. 

It must, of course, be understood that I am speaking 
here of writers who treat of great subjects; not of writers 
on the art of making brandy. 

Unless an author takes the material on which he writer 
out of his own head, that is to say, from his own observa- 
tion, he is not worth reading. Book-manufacturers, 
compilers, the common run of history-writers, and many 
others of the same class, take their material immediately 
out of books; and the material goes straight to their finger- 
tips without even paying freight or undergoing examina- 
tion as it passes througn their heads, to say nothing of 
elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man 
would, be if he knew every tiling that was in his own books! 
The consequence of this is that these writers talk in such 
a loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his 
brains in vain to understand what it is of which they are 
really thinking. They are thinking of nothing. It may 
now and then be the case that the book from which they 
copy has been composed exactly in the same way; so that 
writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a cast; and in 
the end, the bare outline of the face, and that, too, hardly 
recognizable, is all that is left of your Antinous. Let 
compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is difficult 
to avoid them altogether, since compilations also include 
those text-books which contain in a small space the ac- 
cumulated knowledge of centuries. 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the 
last work is always the more correct; that what is written 
later on is in every case an improvement on what was 
written before; and that change always means progress. 
Real thinkers, men of right judgment, people who are in- 
earnest with their subject — these are all exceptions only. 
Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always 
on the alert, taking the mature opinions of the thinkers, 
and industriously seeking to improve upon them (save 
the mark!) in its own peculiar way. 

If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him beware 
of rushing to the newest books upon it, and confining his 



294 THE ART OF LITERA TURE. 

attention to them alone, under the notion that science is 
always advancing, and that the old books have been drawn 
upon in the writing of the new. They have been drawn 
upon, it is true; but how? The writer of the new book 
often does not understand the old books thoroughly, and 
yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so he bungles 
them, and says in his own bad way that which has been 
said very much better and more clearly by the old writers, 
who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. 
The new writer frequently omits the best things they say, 
their most striking illustrations, their happiest remarks; 
because he does not see their value or feel how pregnant 
they are. The only thing that appeals to him is what is 
shallow and insipid. 

It often happens that an old and excellent book is ousted 
by new and bad ones, which, written for 'money, appear 
with an air of great pretension and much puffing on the 
part of friends. In science a man tries to make his mark 
by bringing out something fresh. This often means noth- 
ing more than that he attacks some received theory which 
is quite correct, in order to make room for his own false 
notions. Sometimes the effort is successful for a time; and 
then a return is made to the old and true theory. These 
innovators are serious about nothing but their own precious 
self; it is this that they want to put forward, and the quick 
way of doing so, as they think, is to start a paradox. 
Their sterile heads take naturally to the path of negation; 
so they begin to deny truths that have long been admitted 
— the vital power, for example, the sympathetic nervous 
system, generatio eqinvoca, Bichat's distinction between the 
working of the passions and the working of intelligence; or 
else they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like. 
Hence it frequently happens that " the course of science is 
retrogressive." 

To this class of writers belong those translators who not 
only translate their author but also correct and revise him; 
a proceeding which always seems to me impertinent. To 
such writers I say: Write books yourself which are worth 
translating, and leave other people's works as they are! 

The reader should study, if he can, the real authors, the 
men who have founded and discovered things; or, at any 
rate, those who are recognized as the great masters in every 
branch of knowledge. Let him buy second-hand books 



ON A VTEORSHIP. 295 

rnther than read their contents in new ones. To be sure, 
it is easy to add to any new discovery — invsntis aliquid 
adder e facile est; and, therefore, the student, after well 
mastering the rudiments of his subject, will have to make 
himself acquainted with the more recent additions to the 
knowledge of it. And, in general, the following rule may 
be laid down here as elsewhere; if a thing is new, it is 
seldom good; because if it is good, it is only for a short 
time new. 

What the address is to a letter, the title should be to a 
book; in other words, its main object should be to bring 
the book to those among the public who will take an inter- 
est in its contents. It should, therefore, be expressive; 
and since by its very nature it must be short, it should be 
concise, laconic, pregnant, and if possible give the con- 
tents in one word. A prolix title is bad; and so is one 
"ihat says nothing, or is obscure and ambiguous, or even, it 
may be, false and misleading; this last may possibly in- 
volve the book in the same fate as overtakes a wrongly ad- 
dressed letter. The worst titles of all are those which 
have been stolen, those, I mean, which have al- 
ready been borne by other books; for they are in the 
first place a plagiarism, and secondly the most convincing 
proof of a total lack of originality in the author. A man 
who has not enough originality to invent a new title for 
his book, will be still less able to give it new contents. 
Akin to these stolen titles are those which have been imi- 
tated, that is to say, stolen to the extent of one half; for 
instance, long after I had produced my treatise " On Will 
in Nature," Orested wrote a book entitled " On Mind in 
Nature." 

A book can never be anything more than the impress of 
its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either 
" in the matter about which he has thought," or in the 
form which his thoughts take, in other words, " what it is 
that he has thought about it." 

The matter of books is most various; and various also 
are the several excellences attaching to books on the score 
of their matter. By matter I mean everything that comes 
within the domain of actual experience; that is to say, the 
facts of history and the facts of nature, taken in and by 
themselves and in their widest sense. Here it is the thing 
treated of which gives its peculiar character to the bookj 



296 THE ART OF LITERA TUBS. 

bo that a book can be important, whoever it was that wrote 
it. 

But in regard to the form, the peculiar character of a 
a book depends upon the person who wrote it. It may 
treat of matters which are accessible to every one and well 
known; but it is the way in which they are treated, what 
it is that is thought about them, that gives the book its 
value; and this comes from its author. If, then, from 
this point of view a book is excellent and beyond compar 
sou, so is its author, It follows that if a writer is wortn 
reading his merit rises just in proportion as he owes little 
to his matter; therefore, the better known and the more 
hackneyed this is, the greater he will be. The three great 
tragedians of Greece, for example, all worked at the same 
subject-matter. 

So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken to 
note whether it is so on account of its matter or its form; 
and a distinction should be made accordingly. 

Books of great importance on account of their matter 
may proceed from very ordinary and shallow people, by 
the fact that they alone have had access to this matter; 
books, for instance, which describe journeys in distant 
lands, rare natural phenomena, or experiments; or histor- 
ical occurrences of which the writers were witnesses, or in 
connection with which they have spent much time and 
trouble in the research and special study of original docu- 
ments. 

On the other hand where the matter is accessible to 
every one or very well known, everything will depend upon 
the form; and what it is that is thought about the matter 
will give the book all the value it possesses. Here only a 
really distinguished man will be able to produce anything 
worth reading; for the others will think nothing but what 
anyone else can think. They will just produce an impress 
of their, own minds; but this is a print of which every one 
possesses the original. 

However, the public is very much more concerned to 
have matter than form; and for this very reason it is 
deficient in any high degree of culture. The public shows 
its preference in this respect in the most laughable way 
when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes 
much, trouble to the task of tracing out the actual events 
or personal circumstances in the life of the poet which 



ON A UTBOIISHIP 29? 

Served as the occasion of his various works; nay, these 
events and circumstances come in the end to be of greater 
importance than the works themselves; and rather than 
read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been 
written about him, and to study the legend of Faust more 
industriously than the drama of that name. And when 
Burger declared that " people would write learned dis- 
quisitions on the question, who Leonora really was," we 
find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case; for we now 
possess a great many learned disquisitions on Faust and 
the legend attaching to him. Study of this kind is, and 
remains, devoted to the material of the drama alone. To 
give such preference to the matter over the form, is as 
though a man were to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to 
admire its shape or coloring, but to make a chemical 
analysis of the clay and paint of which it is composed. 

The attempt to produce an effect by means of the 
material employed — an attempt which panders to this evil 
tendency of the public — is most to be condemned in 
branches of literature where any merit there may be lies 
expressly in the form; I mean, in poetical work. For all 
that, it is not rare to find bad dramatists trying to fill the 
house by means of the matter about which they write. 
For example, authors of this kind do not shrink from put- 
ting on the stage any man who is in any way celebrated, 
no matter whether his life may have been entirely devoid 
of dramatic incident; and sometimes, even, they do not 
wait until the persons immediately connected with him are 
dead. 

The distinction between matter and form to which I am 
here alluding, also holds good of conversation. The chief 
qualities which enable a man to converse well are intelli- 
gence, discernment, wit and vivacity: these supply the 
form of conversation. But it is not long before attention 
has to be paid to the matter of which he speaks; in other 
words, the subjects about which it is possible to converse 
with him — his knowledge. If this is very small, his conver- 
sation will not be worth anything, unless he possesses the 
above named formal qualities in a very exceptional degree: 
for he will have nothing to talk about but those facts of 
life and nature which everybody knows. It will be just 
the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in these formal 
qualities,, but has an amount of knowledge which lends 



£98 THE A RT OF LITER A TUTiE. 

value to what he says. This value will then depend 
entirely upon the matter of his conversation; for, as 
the Spanish proverb has it, mas sate el necio en su casa, 
que el sabio en la ageno — a fool knows more of his own busi- 
ness than a wise man of others'. 



ON STYLE. 



Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer 
index to character than the face. To imitate another 
man's style is like wearing a mask, which, be i't never so 
fine, is not long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, be- 
cause it is lifeless; so that even the ugliest living face is bet- 
ter. Hence those who write in Latin and copy the man- 
ner of ancient authors, may be said to speak through a 
mask; the reader, it is true, hears what they say, but he 
cannot observe their physiognomy too: he cannot see their 
style. With the Latin works of writers who think for 
themselves, the case is different, and their style is visible; 
writers, I mean, who have not condescended to any sort of 
imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Des- 
cartes, Spinoza, and many others. And affectation in 
style is like making grimaces. Further, the language in 
which a man writes is the physiognomy of the nation to 
which he belongs; and here there are many hard and fast 
differences, beginning from the language of the Greeks, 
down to that of the Caribbean islanders. 

To form a provisional estimate of the value of a writer's 
productions, it is not directly necessary to know the subject 
on which he has thought, or what it is that he has said 
about it; that would im-piy a perusal of all his works. It 
will be enough, in the main, to know how he has thought. 
This, which means the essential temper or general quality 
of his mind, may be precisely determined by his style. A 
man's style shows the 'formal nature of all his thoughts — 
the formal nature which can never change, be the subject 
or the character of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it 
were, the dough out of which all the contents of his mind 
are kneaded. When Eulenspiege 1 was asked how long it 
would take to walk to the next village, he gave the seem- 
ingly incongruous answer: W^alk. He wanted to find out by 



ON STYLE. 299 

the man's pace the distance lie would cover in a given time. 
In the same way, when I have read a few pages of an 
author, I know fairly well how far lie can bring me. 

Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural 
style, because in his heart ho knows the truth of what I 
am saying. He is thus forced, at the outset, to give up 
dny attempt at being frank or naive — a privilege which is 
thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of their own 
worth, and therefore sure of themselves. What I mean is 
that these everyday writers are absolutely unable to resolve 
upon writing just as they think; because they have a 
notion that, were they to do so, their work might possibly 
h>ok very childish and simple. For all that, it would not 
be without its value. If they would only go honestly to 
work, and say, quite simply, the things they have really 
thought, and just as they have thought them, these writers 
would be readable, and, within their own proper sphere, 
ever, instructive. 

But instead of that, they try to make the reader believe 
that their thoughts have gone much further and deeper 
than is really the case. They say what they have to say 
in long sentences that wind about in a forced and unnatural 
way: they coin new words and write prolix periods which 
go round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort 
of disguise. They tremble between the two separate 
aims of communicating what they want to say and of con- 
cealing it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look 
learned or deep, in order to give people the impression 
that there is very much more in it than for the moment- 
meets the eye. They either jot down their thoughts bit 
by bit, in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences, 
which apparently mean much more than they say, of this 
kind of writing Schelling's treatises on natural philosophy 
are a splendid instance; or else they hold forth with a 
deluge of words and the most intolerable diffusiveness, as 
though no end of fuss were necessary to make the reader 
understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas 
it is some quite simple if not actually trivial idea — exam- 
ples of which may be found in plenty in the popular works 
of Fichte, and the philosophical manuals of a hundred other 
miserable dunces not worth mentioning; or, again, they 
try to write in some particular style which they have been 
pleased tq take up and think very grand, a style, for exam- 



300 1EE ART OF LITERATURE. 

pie, par excellence profound and scientific, where the 
reader is tormented to death by the narcotic effect of long- 
spun periods without a single idea in them — such as are 
furnished in a special measure by those most impudent of 
all mortals, the Hegelians; * or it may be that it is an in- 
tellectual style they have striven after, where it seems as 
though their object were to go crazy altogether; and so on 
in many other cases. All these endeavors to put off the 
nascetur ridiculus mus — to avoid showing the fumy little 
creature that is born after such mighty throes — often make 
it difficult to know what it is that they really mean. And 
then, too, they write down words, nay, evm whole sen- 
tences, without attaching any meaning to them themselves 
but in the hope that some one else will get sense out of 
them. 

And what is at the bottom of all this? Nothing but 
the untiring effort to sell words for thoughts; a mode of 
merchandise that is always trying to make fresh openings for 
itself, and by means of odd expressions, turns of phrase, 
and combinations of every sort, whether new or used in a 
new sense, to produce the appearance of intellect in order 
to make up for the very painfully felt lack of it. 

It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view 
will attempt first one mannerism and then another, as 
though they were putting on the mask of intellect! This 
mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for awhile, 
until it is seen to be a dead thing, with no life in it at all: 
it is then laughed at and exchanged for another. Such an 
author will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as 
though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next 
page, he will be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and 
prolix, stumbling on in the most cumbrous way and chop- 
mg up everything very small; like the late Christian Wolf, 
only in a modern dress. Longest of all lasts the mask of 
unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it 
was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and 
carried to its highest pitch in Hegel — always with the 
best results. 

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one 
Dan understand; just as, contrarily, nothing is more diffi- 

* In tbeir Hegel gazette, commonly known as Jalirbucher del 
wissensckaftliclien Literatur. 



ON STYLE. 30! 

cult than to express deep things in such a way that every 
one must necessarily grasp them. All the arts and tricks 
I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if the au- 
thor really has any brains; for that allows him to show 
himself as he is, and confirms to all time Horace's maxim 
that good sense is the source and origin of good style: 

" Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons." 

But those authors I have named. are like certain workers 
in metal, who try a hundred different compounds to take 
the place of gold — the only metal which can never have 
any substitute. Rather than do that, there is nothing 
against which a writer should be more upon his guard than 
.he manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he 
really has; because this makes the reader suspect that he 
possesses very little; since it is always the case that if a 
man affects anything, whatever it may be, it is just there 
that he is deficient. 

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is 
naive: it means that he need not shrink from showing 
himself as he is. Generally speaking, to be naive is to be 
attractive; while lack of naturalness is everywhere repulsive. 
As a matter of fact we find that every really great writer 
tries to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely 
and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held 
to be a mark of truth: it is also a mark of genius. Style 
receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with 
sham thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be fine because 
of the style. Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of 
thought; and an obscure or bad style means a dull or con- 
fused brain. 

The first rule, then, for a good style is that the author 
should have something to say; nay, this is in itself almost 
all that is necessary. Ah, how much it means! The 
neglect of this rule is a fundamental trait in the philoso- 
phical writing, and, in fact, in all the reflective 
literature of my country, more especially since Fichte. 
These writers all let it be seen that they want to appear as 
though they had something to say; whereas they have 
nothing to say. Writing of this kind was brought in by 
the pseudo-philosophers at the universities, and now it is 
current everywhere, even among the first literary notabili- 



&02 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

ties of the age. It is the mother of that strained and 
vague style, where there seem to be two or even more 
meanings in the sentence; also of that prolix and cumbrous 
manner of expression, called le stile empese; again, of that 
mere waste of words which consists in pouring them out 
like a flood; finally, of that trick of concealing the direst 
poverty of thought under a farrago of never ending chatter,, 
which clacks away like a windmill and quite stupefies one 
— stuff which a man may read for hours together without 
getting hold of a single clearly expressed and definite idea. * 
However, people are easy-going, and they have fcrmed the 
habit of reading page upon page of all sorts of such verbi- 
age, without having any particular idea of what the author 
really means. They fancy it is all as it should be, and fa:, 
to discover that he is writing simply for writing's sake. 

On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon 
wins his reader's confidence that, when he writes, he has 
really and truly something to say; and this gives the 
intelligent reader patience to follow him with attention. 
Such an author, just because he really has something to 
say, will never fail to express himself in the simplest and 
most straightforward manner: because his object is to 
awake the very same thought in the reader that he has in 
himself, and no other. So he will be able to affirm with 
Boileau that his thoughts are everywhere open to the light 
of day, and that his verse always says something, whether 
it says it well or ill: 

" Ma pensee au grand jour partout s'offre et s'expose, 
Et inon vers, bien ou inal, dit toujours quelque chose." 

while of the writers previously described it maybe asserted, 
in the words of the same poet, that they talk much and 
never say anything at all — qui parlant beaucoup ne disent 
jamais rien. 

Another characteristic of such writers is that they always 
avoid a positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so, 
in order to leave a loophole for escape in case of need. 
Hence they never fail to choose the more abstract way of 
expressing themselves; whereas intelligent people use the 
more concrete; because the latter brings things more within 

* Select examples of the art of writing in this style are to be found 
almost passim in the Jahrbiicher, published in Halle, afterward 
called the Deutschen Jahrbiicher. 



ON STYLE. 303 

<he range of actual demonstration, which is the source of 
ill evidence. 

There are many examples proving this preference for 
abstract expression; and a particularly ridiculous one is 
afforded by the use of the verb ".to condition " in the 
sense of to cause or to produce. People say " to condition 
something" instead of to cause it, because being abstract 
and indefinite it says less; it affirms that A cannot happen 
without B, instead of that A is caused by B. A back 
door is always left open; and this suits people whose secret 
knowledge of their own incapacity inspires them with a 
perpetual terror of all positive assertion; while with other 
people it is merely the effect of that tendency by which 
everything that is stupid in literature or bad in life is 
immediately imitated — a fact proved in either case by the 
rapid way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his 
own judgment in what he writes as well as in what he does; 
but there is no nation of which this eulogy is less true than 
of the Germans. The consequence of this state of things 
is that the word cause has of late almost disappeared from 
the language of literature, and people talk only of condi- 
tion. The fact is worth mentioning because it is so charac- 
teristically ridiculous. 

The very fact that these commonplace authors are never 
more than half-conscious when they write, would be enough 
to account for their dullness of mind and the tedious things 
they produce. I say they are only half-conscious, because 
they really do not themselves understand the meaning of 
the words they use; they take words ready-made and commit 
them to memory. Hence when they write, it is not so 
much words as whole phrases that they put together — 
phrases banales. This is the explanation of that palpable 
lack of clearly-expressed thought in what they say. The 
fact is that they do not possess the die to give this stamp 
to their writing; clear thought of their own is just what 
they have not got. And what do we not find in its place? 
— a vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, current 
phrases, hackneyed terms, and fashionable expressions. 
The result is that the foggy stuff they write is like a page 
printed with very old type. 

On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks 
to us when he writes, and that is why he is able to rouse 
our interest and commune with us. It is the intelligent 



304 THE AR T OF LITERA TURK 

author alone who puts individual words together with a 
full consciousness of their meaning, and chooses them 
with deliberate desigu. Consequently, his discourse stands 
to that of the writer described above, much as a picture 
that has been really painted to one that has been produced 
by the use of a stencil. In the one case, every word, every 
touch of the brush, has a special purpose; in the other, 
all is done mechanically. The same distinction may be 
observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says that 
Garrick's soul seemed to be in every muscle in his body, so 
it is the omnipresence of intellect that always and every- 
where characterizes the work of genius. 

I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works 
of these writers; and in this connection it is to be observed 
generally, that tediousness is of two kinds: objective and 
subjective. A work is objectively tedious when it contains 
the defect in question; that is to say, when its author has 
no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate. 
For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge his aim 
will be to communicate it, and he will direct his energies 
to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are everywhere 
clearly expressed. The result is that he is neither diffuse, 
nor unmeaning, nor confused, and consequently not tedious. 
In such a case, even though the author is at bottom in 
error, the error is at any rate clearly worked out and well 
thought over, so that it is at least formally correct; and 
thus some value always attaches to the work. But for 
the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all 
times devoid of any value whatever. 

The other kind of tediousness is only relative: a reader 
may find a work dull because he has no interest in the 
question treated of in it, and this means that his intellect" 
is restricted. The best work may, therefore, be tedious 
subjectively, tedious, I mean to Ibis or that particular 
person: just as, contrarily, the worst work may be sub- 
jectively engrossing to this or that particular person who 
has an interest in the question treated of, or in the writer 
of the book. 

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they 
would see that, while a man should, if possible, think like 
a great genius, he should talk the same language as 
every one else. Authors should use common words to say 
uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We 



ON STYLE. 305 

find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, 
ami to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most ex- 
traordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and 
out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually 
■talk about on stilts. Tiny take so much pleasure in bom- 
bast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected, 
hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is 
Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently 
told to say what he had to say, " like a man of this world."* 

There is no expression in any other language exactly 
answering to the French sale empese; but the thing itself 
exists all the more often. When associated with affec- 
tation, it is in literature what assumption of dignity, grand 
airs and primness are in society; and equally intolerable. 
Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as in 
ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure 
and formal. 

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man 
who dresses himself up in order to avoid being confounded 
?r put on the same level with the mob — a risk never run 
by the gentleman, even in his worst clothes. The plebeian 
may be known by a certain showiness of attire, and a wish 
to have everything spick and span; and in the same way, 
the commonplace person is betrayed by his style. 

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to 
write exactly as he speaks. There is no style of writing 
but should have a certain trace of kinship with the 
epigraphic or monumental style, which is, indeed, the 
ancestor of all styles. For an author to write as he speaks 
is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak 
as he w r rites; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he 
says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. 

An obscure and vague manner of expression is always 
and everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out 
of a hundred it comes from vagueness of thought; and 
this again almost always means that there is something 
radically wrong and incongruous about the thought itself — 
in a word, that it is incorrect. When a right thought 
springs up in the mind, it strives after expression and is 
not long in reaching it; for clear thought easily finds 
words to fit it. If a man is capable of thinking anything 

* "King Henry IV., " Part II, Act v. Sc. 3. 



306 THE ART OF LITERA TURE. 

at all, he is also always able to express it in clear, in 
telligible, and unambiguous terms. Those writers who 
construct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal sen- 
tences, most certainly do not know aright what it is that 
they want to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, 
which is still in the stage of struggle to shape itself as 
thought. Often, indeed, their desire is to conceal from 
themselves and others that they really have nothing at all 
to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not 
know, to think what they do not think, to say wiiat they 
do not say. If a man has some real communication to 
make, which will he choose— an indistinct or a clear way 
of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that 
things which are said by a highly educated man are often 
easier to understand and much clearer: and that the less 
educated a man is, the more obscurely he will write — 
*' jrterumque accidit id faciliora suit ad intelhgendum et 
luctdwra m-ulto quce a doctissimo quoque dicuntur .... 
Ent ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque deter wr." 

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases: he should 
know whether he wants to say a thing or does not want to 
say it. It is this indecision cf style that makes so many 
writers insipid. The only case that offers an exception to 
this rule arises when it is necessary to make a remark that 
is in some way improper. 

As exaggeration generally produces an effect the opposite 
of that aimed at, so words, it is true, serve to make thought 
intelligible — but only up to a certain point. If words are 
heaped up beyond it, the thought becomes more and more 
obscure again. To find where the point lies is the problem 
of style, and the business of the critical faculty; for a word 
too much always defeats its purpose. This is what 
Voltaire means when he says that " the adjective is the 
enemy of the substantive." But, as we have seen, many 
people try to conceal their poverty of thought under a 
flood of verbiage. . 

Accordingly, let all redundancy be avoided, all string- 
ing together of remarks which have no meaning and are 
not worth perusal. A writer must make a sparing use of 
the reader's time, patience and attention; so as to lead him 
to believe that his author writes what is worth careful 
study, and will reward the time spent upon it. It is 
always better to omit something good than to add that 



ON STYLE. 30? 

which is not worth saying at all. This is the right appli- 
cation of Hesiod's maxim, nXiov %jui<5v itavro^ — the half is 
more than the whole. Le secret pour etre ennuyeux, c'est 
de tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the quintessence only! 
mere leading thoughts! nothing that the reader would 
think for himself. To use many words to communicate 
few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of medi- 
ocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps 
the man of genius. 

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it 
makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been 
simple. This is so, partly because it then takes unob- 
structed possession of the hearer's whole soul, and leaves him 
uo by-thought to distract him: partly, also, because he 
p eels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by the 
aits of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes 
from the thing itself. For instance, what declamation on 
the vanity of human existence could ever be more telling 
than the words of Job? — " Man that is born of a woman 
hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He 
cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it 
were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." 

For the same reason Goethe's naive poetry is incompar- 
ably greater than Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, again, that 
makes many popular songs so affecting. As in architecture 
an excess of decoration is to be avoided, so in the art of 
literature a writer must guard against all rhetorical finery, 
all useless amplification, and all superfluity of expression 
in general: in a word, he must strive after chastity of 
style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it 
remains. The law of simplicity and naivety holds good of 
all fine art; for it is quite possible to be at once simnle and 
sublime. 

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying 
only what is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail 
about things which every one can supply for himself. This 
involves correct discrimination between what is necessary 
and what is superfluous. A writer should never be brief 
at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of being 
grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judgment to 
weaken the expression of a thought or to stunt the mean- 

* "Works and Days," 40. 



308 THE ART OF L1TBRA TURK. 

nig of a period for the sake of using a few words less. 
But this is the precise endeavor of that false brevity now- 
adays so much in vogue, which proceeds by leaving out 
useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and logic. 
It is not only that such writers spare a word by making a 
single verb or adjective do duty for several different periods, 
so that the reader, as it were, has to grope his way through 
them in the dark; they also practice, in many other re- 
spects, an unseemly economy of speech, in the effort to 
effect what they foolishly take to be brevity of expression 
and conciseness of style. By omitting something that 
might have thrown a light over the whole sentence, they 
turn it into a conundrum, which the reader tries to solve 
by going over it again and again.* 

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, 
that gives brevity to style, and makes it concise and preg- 
nant. If a writer's ideas are important, luminous, and 
generally worth communicating, they will necessarily fur- 
nish matter and substance enough to fill out the periods 
which give them expression, and make these in all their 
parts both grammatically and verbally complete; and so 
much will this be the case that no one will ever find them 
hollow, empty or feeble. The diction will everywhere be 
brief and pregnant, and allow the thought to find intelligi- 
ble and easy expression, and even unfold and move about 
with grace. 

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of 
speech, let a writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has 
been thinned by illness and finds his clothes too big, it is 
not by cutting them down, but by recovering his usual 
bodily condition, that he ought to make them fit him again. 

Let me here mention an error of style very prevalent 
uowadays, and, in the degraded state of literature and the 
neglect of ancient languages, always on the increase; I 

* Translator 's Note. In the original, Schopenhauer here enters 
upon a lengthy exauiinaton of certain common errors in the writing 
and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed to his own 
countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they were intelligible, 
in an English translation. But lor those who practice their German 
by conversing or corresponding with Germans, let me recommend 
what he there says as a useful corrective to a slipshod style, such as 
can easily be contracted if it is assumed that the natives of a country 
always know their own language perfectly. 



ON STYLE. 309 

mean subjectivity. A writer commits this error when he 
tii inks it enough if he himself knows what he means and 
wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is 
left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as 
though the author were holding a monologue, whereas it 
might to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he 
must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he 
cannot hear the questions of his interlocutor. 

Style should for this very reason never be subjective, 
but objective; and it will not be objective unless the words 
are so set down that they directly force the reader to think 
precisely the same thing as the author thought when he 
wrote them. Nor will this result be obtained unless the 
author has always been careful to remember that thought 
so far follows the law of gravity that it travels from head 
to paper much more easily than from paper to head; so 
that he must assist the latter passage by every means in his 
power. If he does this, a writer's words will have a purely 
objective effect, like that of a finished picture in oils", 
while the subjective style is not much more certain in its 
working than spots on the wall, which look like figures 
only to one whose tantasy has been accidentally aroused 
by them; other people see nothing but spots and blurs. 
The difference in question applies to literary method as a 
a whole; but it is often established also in particular in- 
stances. For example, in a recently published work I 
found the following sentence: "I have not written in 
order to increase the number of existing books." This 
means just the opposite of what the writer wanted to say, 
and is nonsense as well. 

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very 
outset that he does not attach much importance to his own 
thoughts. For it is only where a man is convinced of the 
truth and importance of his thoughts, that he feels the en- 
thusiasm necessary for an untiring and assiduous effort to 
find the clearest, finest, and strongest expression for them, 
just as for sacred relics or priceless works of art there are 
provided silvern or golden receptacles. It was this feeling 
that led ancient authors, whose thoughts, expressed in 
their own words, have lived thousands of years, and there- 
fore bear the honored title of classics, always to write with 
care. Plato, indeed, is said to have written the introduc- 



310 THE ART OF LITEUA 1 UUE. 

tion to his "Republic" seven times over indifferent ways.* 
As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the com- 
pany a man meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style shows 
an outrageous lack of regard for the reader, who then 
rightly punishes it by refusing to read the book. It is es- 
pecially amusing to see reviewers criticising the works of 
others iu their own most careless style — the style of a hire- 
ling. It is as though a judge were to come into court in 
dressing-gown and slippers! If I see a man badly and 
dirtily dressed, I feel some hesitation, at first, in entering 
into conversation with him: and when, on taking up a 
book, I am struck at once by the negligence of its style, I 
put it away. 

Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man 
can think only one thing clearly at a time; and therefore, 
that he should not be expected to think two or even more 
things in one and the same moment. But this is what is 
lone when a writer breaks up his principal sentence into 
little pieces, for the purpose of pushing into the gaps 
thus made two or three other thoughts by way of parenthe- 
sis; thereby unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the 
reader. And here it is again my own countrymen who are 
chiefly in fault. That German lends itself to this way of 
writing, makes the thing possible, but does not justify it. 
No prose reads more easily or pleasantly than French, be- 
cause, as a rule, it is free from the error in question. The 
Frenchman strings his thoughts together, as far as lie can, 
in the most logical and natural order, and so lays them be- 
fore his reader one after the other for convenient delibera- 
tion, so that every one of them may receive undivided 
attention. The German, on the other band, weaves them to- 
gether into a sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses 
and twists again; because he wants to say six things all at 
once, instead of advancing them one by one. His aim should 
be to attract and hold the reader's attention; but, above and 
beyond neglect of this aim, he demands from the reader 
that he shall set the above mentioned rule at defiance, and 
think three or four different thoughts at one and the same 
time; or since that is impossible, that his thoughts shall 

* Translator's Note. — It. is a fact worth mentioning that the first 
twelve words of the " Republic" are placed in the exact order which 
would be natural in English. 



ON STYLE. 311 

succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a cord. 
Iu this way an author lays the foundation of his stile em- 
pese, which is then carried to perfection by the use of 
high-flown, pompous expressions to communicate the 
simplest things, and other artifices of the same kind. 

In those long sentences rich in involved parentheses, 
like a box of boxes one within another, and padded out 
like roast geese stuffed w 7 ith apples, it is really the memory 
*ihat is chiefly taxed; while it is the understanding and the 
judgment which should be called into play, instead of hav- 
ing their activity thereby actually hindered and weakened.* 
This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere half- 
phrases, which he is then called upon to collect carefully 
and store up in his memory, as though they were the 
pieces of a torn letter, afterward to be completed and made 
sense of by the other halves to which they respectively 
belong. He is expected to go on reading for a little with- 
out exercising any thought, nay, exerting only his mem- 
ory, in the hope that, when lie comes to the end of the 
sentence, he may see its meaning and so receive something 
to think about; and he is thus given a great deal to learn 
-by heart before obtaining anything to understand. This 
is manifestly wrong and an abuse of the reader's 
patience. 

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for 
this style, because it causes the reader to spend time and 
trouble in understanding that which he would have under- 
stood in a moment without it; and this makes it look as 
though the writer had more depth and intelligence than 
the reader. This is, indeed, one of those artifices referred 
to above, by means of which mediocre authors uncon- 
sciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal their 
poverty of thought and give an appearance of the 
opposite. Their ingenuity in this respect is really 
astounding. 

It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one 
thought obliquely on top of another, as though both to- 
gether formed a wooden cross. But this is what is done 

* Iranslator's Note. — This sentence in the original is obviously 
meant to illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does so by the 
use of a construction very common in German, but happily unknown 
in English ; where, however, the fault itself exists none the less, 
though in a different form. 



312 TEE ART OF LITER A TUtlE. 

where a writer interrupts what he has begun to say, for the 
purpose of inserting some quite alien matter; thus deposit- 
ing with the reader a meaningless half-sentence, and 
bidding him keep it until the completion comes. It is 
much as though a man were to treat his guests by handing 
them an empty plate, in the hope of something appearing 
upon it. And commas used for a similar purpose belong 
to the same family as notes at the foot of the page and 
parentheses in the middle of the text; nay, all three differ 
only in degree. If Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally 
inserted words by way of parenthesis, they would have 
done better to have refrained. 

But this style of writing becomes the height of absurdity 
when the parentheses are not even fitted into the frame of 
the sentence, but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, 
for instance, it is an impertinent thing to interrupt an- 
other person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent 
to interrupt one's self. But all bad, careless, and hasty 
authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their 
eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and re- 
joice in it. It consists in — it is advisable to give rule and 
example together, wherever it is possible — breaking up one 
phrase in order to glue in another. Nor is it merely out 
of laziness that they write thus. They do it out of stupid- 
ity; they think there is a charming Ugerete about it; that 
it gives life to what they say. No doubt there are a 
few rare cases where such a form of sentence may be 
pardonable. 

Few write in the way in which an architect builds; who, 
before he sets to work, sketches out his plan, and thinks it 
over down to its smallest details. Nay, most people write 
only as though they were playing dominoes; and as in this 
game the pieces are arranged half by design, half by 
chance, so it is with the sequence and connection of then- 
sentences. They only just have an idea of what the 
general shape of their work will be, and of the aim they set 
before themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, and 
write as the coral-insects build; period joins to period, and 
Lord knows what the author means. 

Life now a days goes at a gallop; and the way in which 
this affects literature is to make it extremely superficial 
and slovenly, 



ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 313 



ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 

The abolition of Latin as the universal language of 
learned men, together with the rise of that provincialism 
which attaches to national literatures, has been a real mis- 
fortune for the cause of knowledge in Europe. For it 
was chiefly through the medium of the Latin language 
that a learned public existed in Europe at all — a public tc 
which every book as it came out directly appealed. The 
number of minds in the whole of Europe that are capable 
of thinking and judging is small, as it is; but when the 
audience is broken up and severed by differences of lan- 
guage, the good these minds can do is very much weakened. 
This is a great disadvantage; but a second and worse one 
will follow, namely, that the ancient languages will cease 
to be taught at all. The neglect of them is rapidly gain- 
ing ground both in France and Germany. 

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity! 
farewell, noble taste and high thinking! The age of bar- 
barism will return, in spite of railways, telegraphs and 
balloons. We shall thus in the end lose one more advan- 
tage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is not only 
a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; it also directly 
opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe 
and modern times as well, down to about the year 1750. 
Erigena, for example, in the ninth century, John of Salis- 
bury in the twelfth, Raimond Lullyin the thirteenth, with 
a hundred others, speak straight to us in the very language 
that they naturally adopted in thinking of learned matters. 
They thus come quite close to us even at this distance of 
time: we are in direct contact with them, and really corns 
to know them. How would it have been if every one of 
them spoke in the language that was peculiar go his time 
and country? We should not understand even the half of 
what they said. A real intellectual contact with them 
would be impossible. We should see them like shadows 
on the farthest horizon, or, maybe, through the translator's 
telescope. 

It was with an eye to the advantage of writing in Latin 
that Bacon, as he himself expressly states, proceeded to 
translate his " Essays " into that language, under the title 



314 TEE ART OF LITER A TURE. 

" Sermones fideles; " at which work Hobbes assisted him.* 
Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that when 
patriotism tries to urge its claims in the domain of knowl- 
edge, it commits an offense which should not be tolerated. 
For in those purely human questions which interest al! 
men alike, where truth, insight, beauty, should be of sole 
account, what can be more impertinent than to let prefer- 
ence for the nation to which a man's precious self happens 
to belong, affect the balance of judgment, and thus supply 
a reason for doing violence to truth and being unjusi tc 
the great minds of a foreign country in order to make 
much of the smaller minds of one's own! Still, there 
are writers in every nation in Em-ope who afford examples 
of this vulgar feeling. It is this which led Yriaite to 
caricature them in the thirty-third of his charming 
" Literary Fables." f 

In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists in 
making acquaintance with every idea which it expresses, 
even though it should use words for which there is no 
exact equivalent in the mother tongue; and this often 
happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it 
were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new 
spheres of ideas, with the result that splices of ideas arise 
where none were before. Thus he not only learns words, 
lie gains ideas too. 

This is nowhere so much the case as in learning ancient 

* Cf. Thomas Hobbes vita: "Carolopoli apud Eleutherium Angli- 
cam, 1681, p. 22. 

f Translator's Note. — Tomas de Yriarte (1750-91.) a Spanish poet, 
and keeper of archives in the war office at Madrid. His two best-known 
works are a didactic poem, entitled " La Musica " and the " Fables" 
here quoted, which satirise the peculiar foibles of literary men. 
They bave been translated into many languages; into English by 
Kockcliffe (3d edition, 1866). The fable in question describes how, at 
a picnic of the animals, a discussion arose as to which of them carried 
off the palm for superiority of talent. The praises of the ant, the 
dog, the bee, and the parrot were sung in turn; but at last the 
ostrich stood up and declared for the dromedary. Whereupon the 
dromedary stood up and declared for the ostrich. No one could dis- 
cover the reason for this mutual compliment. Was it because both 
were such uncouth beasts, or had such long necks, or were neither 
of them particularly cle»er or beautiful? or was it because each had 
a hump? " No ! " said the fox," you are all wrong. Don't you see 
they are both foreigners ? " Cannot the same be said of many 
aien of learning? 



ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 315 

languages, for the differences they present in their mode of 
expression as compared with modern languages is greater 
than can be found among modern languages as compared 
with one another. This is shown by the fact that in trans- 
lating into Latin, recourse must be had to quite other turns 
of phrase than are in use in the original. The thought 
that is to be translated has to be melted down and recast; 
in other words, it must be analyzed and then recomposed. 
It is just this process which makes the study of the ancient 
languages contribute so much to the education of the 
mind. 

It follows from this that a man's thought varies according 
to the language in which he speaks. His ideas undergo a 
fresh modification, a different shading, as it were, in the 
study of every new language. Hence an acquaintance with 
many languages is not only of much indirect advantage, 
but it is also a direct means of mental culture, in that it 
corrects and matures ideas by giving prominence to their 
many-Bided nature and their different varieties of meaning, 
as also that it increases dexterity of thought; for in the 
process of learning many languages ideas become more and 
more independent of words. The ancient languages effect 
this to an incomparably greater degree thai: the modern, in 
virtue of the difference to which I have alluded. 

From what I have said, it is obvious that to imitate the 
style of the ancients in their own language, which is so 
very much superior to ours in point of grammatical perfec- 
tion, is the best way of preparing for a skillful and 
finished expression of thought in the mother-tongue. Nay, 
if a man wants to be a great writer, he must not omit to do 
this; just as, in the case of sculpture or painting, the 
student must educate himself by copying the great master- 
pieces of the past, before proceeding to original work. It 
is only by learning to write Latin that a man comes to 
treat diction as an art. The material in this art is language, 
which must therefore be handled with the greatest care and 
delicacy. 

The result of such study is that a writer will pay keen 
attention to the meaning and value of words, their order 
and connection, their grammatical forms. He will learn 
how to weigh them with precision, and so become an ex- 
pert in the use of that precious instrument which is meant 
not only to express valuable thought, but to preserve it as 



316 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

well. Further, he will learn to feel respect for the 
language in which he writes, and thus be saved from any 
attempt to remodel it by arbitrary and capricious treat- 
ment. Without this schooling, a man's writing may easily 
degenerate into mere chatter. 

To be entirely ignorant of the Latin language is like 
being in a fine country on a misty day. The horizon is 
extremely limited. Nothing can be seen clearly except 
that which is quite close; a few steps beyond, everything is 
buried in obscurity. But the Latinist has a wide view, 
embracing modern times, the Middle Age and Antiquity; 
and his mental horizon is still further enlarged if he studies 
Greek or even Sanscrit. 

If a man knows no Latin, he belongs to the vulgar, 
eveu though he be a great virtuoso on the electrical 
machine and have the base of hydrofluoric acid in his 
crucible. 

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study 
of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your 
hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel your- 
self refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; 
just as though you had quenched your thirst at some pure 
spring. Is this the etfect of the old language and its per- 
feet expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose 
works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of 
a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I 
know. If the threatened calamity should ever come, and 
the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new literature 
will arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff 
as never was seen before. 



ON MEN OF LEARNING. 

When one sees the number and variety of institutions 
which exist for the purposes of education, and the vast 
throng of scholars and masters, one might fancy the human 
race to be very much concerned about truth and wisdom. 
But here, too, appearances are deceptive. The masters 
teach in order to gain money, and strive, not after wisdom, 
but the outward show and reputation of it ; and the schol- 
ars learn, not for the sake of knowledge and insight, but 



ON MEN OF LEARNING. 317 

to be able to chatter and give themselves airs. Every 
thirty years a new race comes into the world — a youngster 
that knows nothing about anything, and after summarily 
devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as 
they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires 
to be thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this 
purpose he goes to the university, and takes to reading 
books — new books, as being of his own age and standing. 
Everything he reads must be briefly put, must be new! 
lie is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And 
here I am not taking the slightest account of studies pur- 
sued for the sole object of making a living. 

Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age, 
aim as a rule at acquiring information rather than insight. 
They pique themselves upon knowing about everything — 
stones, plants, battles, experiments, and all the books in 
existence. It never occurs to them that information is 
only a means of insight, and in itself of little or no value; 
that it is his way of thinking that makes a man a philoso- 
pher. When I hear of these portents of learning and their 
imposing erudition, 1 sometimes say to myself: Ah, how 
little they must have had to think about, to have been 
able to read so much! And when I actually find it re- 
ported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading 
or being read to at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the 
question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was 
so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have 
alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he 
were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himseL 
alive. And neither his undiscerning credulity nor his in- 
expressibly repulsive and barely intelligible style — which 
seems like that of a man taking notes, and very econom- 
ical of paper — is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his 
power of independent thought. 

We have seen that much reading and learning is prej- 
udicial to thinking for one's self; and, in the same way, 
through much writing and teaching, a man loses the habit 
of being quite clear, and therefore thorough in regard to 
the things he knows and understands; simply because he 
has left himself no time to acquire clearness or thorough- 
ness. And so, when clear knowledge fails him in his 
utterances, he is forced to fill out the gaps with words and 
phrases. It is this, and not the dryness of the subject- 



318 THE ART OF LITER A TURE. 

matter, that makes most books such tedious reading. 
There is a saving that a good cook can make a palatable 
dish even out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make 
the dryest things interesting. 

With by far the largest number of learned men, knowl- 
edge is a means, not an end. That is why they will never 
achieve any great work; because, to do that, he who pur- 
sues knowledge must pursue it as an end, and treat every- 
thing else, even existence itself, as only a means. For 
everything which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is 
but half pursued; and true excellence, no matter in what 
sphere, can be attained only where the work has been pro- 
duced for its own sake alone, and not as a means to 
further ends. 

And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything 
really great and original in the way of thought, who does 
not seek to acquire knowledge for himself, and, making 
this the immediate object of his studies, decline to trouble 
himself about the knowledge of others. But the average 
man of learning studies for the purpose of being able to 
teach and write. His head is like a stomach and intestines 
which let the food pass through them undigested. That is 
just why his teaching and writing is of so little use. For 
it is not upon undigested refuse that people can be nour- 
ished, but solely upon the milk which secretes from the 
very blood itself. 

The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learn- 
ing, pure and simple. It adorns the head with a copious 
quantity of false hair, in lack of one's own: just as erudi- 
tion means endowing it with a great mass of alien thought. 
This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so well and 
naturally, nor is it so generally useful, nor so suited for all 
purposes, nor so firmly rooted; nor when alien thought is 
used up, can it be immediately replaced by more from the 
same source, as is the case with that which springs from 
soil of one's own. So we find Sterne, in his " Tristram 
Shandy," boldly asserting that " an ounce of a man's own 
wit is worth a ton of other people's." 

And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin 
to genius than a collection of dried plants is like Nature, 
with its constant flow of new life, ever fresh, ever young, 
ever changing. There are no two things more opposed 
than the childish naivety of an ancient author and the 
learning of his commentator 



ON MEN OF LEARNING. 319 

Dilettanti, dilettanti! This is the slighting way in 
which those who pursue any branch of art or learning for 
the love and enjoyment of the thing— per il loro diletto 
are spoken of by those who have taken it up for the sake 
of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money. This 
contempt of theirs conies from the base belief that no man 
will seriously devote himself to a subject, unless he is 
spurred on to it by want, hunger, or else some form of 
greed. The public is of the same way of thinking; ana 
hence its general respect for professionals, and its distrust 
of dilettanti. But the truth is that the dilettante treats 
his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and 
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be 
really in earnest about a matter, who has a direct interest 
therein, takes to it because he likes it, and pursues it con 
amove. It is these, and not hirelings, that have always 
done the greatest work. 

In the republic of letters it is as in other republics; 
favor is shown to the plain man — he who goes on his way 
in silence and does not set up to be cleverer than others. 
But the abnormal man is looked upon as threatening 
danger; people band together against him, and have, oh! 
such a majority on their side. 

The condition of this republic is much like that of a 
small state in America, where every man is intent only 
upon his own advantage, and seeks reputation and power 
for himself, quite heedless of the general weal, which then 
goes to ruin. So it is in the republic of letters; it is him- 
self, and himself alone, that a man puts forward, because 
he wants to gain fame. The only thing in which all agree 
is in trying to keep down a really eminent man, if he 
should chance to show himself, as one who would be a 
common peril. From this it is easy to see how it fares 
with knowledge as a whole. 

Between professors and independent men of learning 
there has alw r ays been from of old a certain antagonism, 
which may perhaps be likened to that existing between 
dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position, professorsen- 
joy great facilities for becoming known to their contempo- 
raries. Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by 
their position, great facilities for becoming known to pos- 
terity; to which it is necessary that, among other and 
much rarer gifts, a man should have a certain leisure and 



B20 THE ART OF LITER A TTJRE. 

freedom. As mankind takes a long time in finding out on 
whom to bestow its attention, they may both work to- 
gether side by side. 

He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his 
food in the stall; and this is the best way with ruminant ani- 
mals. But he who finds his food for himself at the hands 
of nature is better off in the open field. 

Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of 
it, by far the largest part exists nowhere but on paper 
— I mean, in books, that paper memory of mankind. 
Only a small part of it is at any given period really active 
in the minds of particular persons. This is due in the 
main, to the brevity and uncertainty of life ; but it also 
comes from the fact that men are lazy and bent on pleas- 
ure. Every generation attains, in its hasty passage 
through existence, just so much of human knowledge as it 
needs, and then soon disappears. Most men of learning 
are very superficial. Then follows a new generation, full 
of hope, but ignorant, and with everything to learn from 
the beginning. It seizes, in its turn, just so much as it 
can grasp, or find useful on its brief journey, and then too 
goes its way. How badly it would fare with human 
knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and print- 
ing! This it is that makes libraries the only sure and 
lasting memory of the human race, for its individual mem- 
bers have all of them but a very limited and imperfect one. 
Hence most men of learning are as loth to have their 
knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their 
books. 

Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the 
eye can reach; and of that which would be generally 
worth knowing, no one man can possess even the thous 
andth part. 

All branches of learning have thus been so much en- 
larged that lie who would " do something " has to pursue 
no more than one subject and disregard all others. In his 
own subject he will then, it is true, be superior to the vul- 
gar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we add to this 
that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days 
on the increase and is doing away with all general educa- 
tion in the humanities — for a mere smattering of Latin and 
Greek is of no use — we shall come to have men of learning 
who outside their own subject display an ignorance truly 
bovine. 



ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 321 

An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with 
a workman in a factory, whose whole life is spent in 
making one particular kind of screw, or catch, or handle, 
for some particular instrument or machine, in which, in- 
deed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may 
also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and 
never leaves it. There he is perfectly familiar with every- 
thing, every little step, corner, or board; much as Quasi- 
modo in Victor Hugo's " Notre Dame" knows the cathe- 
dral; but outside it, all is strange and unknown. 

For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely 
necessary that a man should be many-sided and take large 
views; and for a man of learning in the higher sense of 
the word, an extensive acquaintance with history is need- 
ful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete philoso- 
pher, must gather into his head the remotest ends of 
human knowledge: for where else could they ever come 
together? 

It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be 
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of 
existence their problem; and this is a subject upon which 
they will every one of them in some form provide man- 
kind with a new revelation. For he alone can deserve the 
name of genius who takes the All, the Essential, the 
Universal, for the theme of his achievements; not he who 
spends his life in explaining some special relation of 
things one to another. 



ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 

A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it 
is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In 
the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge, 
but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for him- 
self, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which 
he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when a man 
looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the 
things he knows by comparing truth with truth, that he 
obtains a complete hold over it and gets it into his power. 
A man cannot turn over anything in his mind unless he 
knows it; he should therefore, learn something; but it is 



322 THE ART OF LITER A TURE. 

only when he has turned it over that hf can be said to 
know it- 
Reading and learning are things that any one can do of 
his own free will; but not so thinking. Thinking must 
be kindled, like a fire by a draught; it must be sustained 
by some interest in the matter in hand. This interest may 
be of purely objective kind, or merely subjective. The 
latter comes into play only in things that concern us per- 
sonally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think 
by nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; 
and they are very rare. This is why most men of learning 
show so little of it. 

It is incredible what a different effect is produced upon 
the mind by thinking for one's self, as compared with read- 
ing. It carries on and intensifies that original difference in 
the nature of two minds which leads the one to think and 
the other to read. What I mean is that reading forces 
alien thoughts upon the mind — thoughts which are as 
foreign to the drift and temper in which it may be for the 
moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its 
imprint. The mind is thus entirely under compulsion 
from without; it is driven to think this or that, though for 
the moment it may not have the slightest impulse or 
inclination to do so. 

But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the 
impulse of his own mind, which is determined for him at 
the time, either by his environment or some particular recol- 
lection. The visible world of a man's surroundings does 
not, as reading does, impress a single definite thought upon 
his mind, but merely gives the matter and occasion which 
lead him to think what is appropriate to his nature and 
present temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the 
mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring continually 
under pressure. The safest way of having no thoughts of 
one's own is to take up a bock every moment one has noth- 
ing else to do. It is this practice which explains why erudi- 
tion makes most men more stupid and silly than they are by 
nature, and prevents their writings obtaining any measure 
of success. They remain, in Pope's words: 

" Forever reading, never to be read! " * 

Men of learning are those who have done their reading 

* " Dunciad,"iiL 194. 



ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 323 

tn the pages of a book. Thinkers and men of genius are 
those who have gone straight to the book of nature; it is 
they who have enlightened the world and carried humanity 
further on its way. 

If a man's thoughts are to have truth and life in them, 
they must, after all be his own fundamental thoughts, 
for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly 
understand. To read another's thoughts is like taking 
the leavings of a meal to which we have not been invited, 
or putting on the clothes which some unknown visitor has 
laid aside. 

The thought we read is related to the thought which 
springs up in ourselves, as the fossil-impress of some pre- 
historic plant to a plant as it buds forth in springtime. 

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought 
of one's own. It means putting the mind into leading- 
strings. The multitude of books serves only to show how 
many false paths there are, and how widely astray a man 
may wander if he follows any of them. But he who is 
guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks 
spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by 
which he can steer aright. A man should read only when 
his own thoughts stagnate at their source, which will 
happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the 
other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring 
away one's own original thoughts is sin against the Holy 
Spirit. It is like running away from nature to look at a 
museum of dried plants or gaze at a landscape in copper- 
plate. 

A man may have discovered some portion of truth oi 
wisdom, after spending a great deal of time and trouble in 
thinking it over for himself and adding thought to thought; 
and it may sometimes happen that he could have found it 
all ready to hand in a book and spared himself the trouble. 
But even so, it is a hundred times more valuable if he has 
acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only 
when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as 
an integral part, a living member into the whole system of 
our thought; that it stands in complete and firm relation 
with what we know; that it is understood with all that 
underlies it and follows from it; that it wears the color, 
the precise shade, the distinguishing mark of our own way 
of thinking; that it comes exactly at the right time, just 



324 THE A R T OF LIT ERA TURK 

as we felt the necessity for ;t; that it stands fast ana -can- 
not be forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the 
interpretation, of Goethe's advice to earn our inheritance 
for ourselves so that we may really possess it: 

" Was du ererbt vondeinen Vatern Last, 
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen."* 

The man who thinks for himself, forms his own opin- 
ions and learns the authorities for them only later on, when 
they serve but to strengthen his belief in them and in 
himself. But the book-philosopher starts from the authori- 
ties, He reads other people's books, collects their opin- 
ions, and so forms a whole for himself, which resembles an 
automaton made up of anything, but flesh and blood. 
Contrarily, he who thinks for himself creates a work like 
a living man as made by Nature. For the work comes 
into being as a man does; the thinking mind is impreg- 
nated from without and it then forms and bears its child! 

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial 
limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made 
out of another's flesh; it adheres to us only because it is 
put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like 
a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the 
fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere 
man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man 
who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the 
light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the color 
perfectly harmonized; it is true to life. On the other 
hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learn- 
ing are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colors, which 
at most are systematically arranged, but devoid o_ 
harmony, connection and meauing. 

Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of 
one's own. To think with one's own head is always to aim 
at developing a coherent whole —a system, even though it 
be not a strictly complete one; and nothing hinders this 
so much as too strong a current of others' thoughts, such 
as comes of continual reading. These thoughts, springing 
every one of them from different minds, belonging to dif- 
ferent systems, and tinged with different colors, never of 
themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; 

*"Faust,"l. 339. 



ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 325 

they never form a unity of knowledge, or insight, or con- 
viction; but, rather, fill the head with a Babylonian con- 
fusion of tongues. The mind that is over-loaded with 
alien thought is thus deprived of all clear insight, and so 
well-nigh disorganized. This is a state of things observ- 
able in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior 
in sound sense, correct judgment and practical tact, to 
many illiterate persons who, after obtaining a little knowl- 
edge from without by means of experience, intercourse 
with others, and a small amount of reading, have always 
subordinated it to, and embodied it with, their own 
thought. 

The really scientific thinker does the same thing as 
these illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although 
he has need of much knowledge, and so must read a great 
deal, his mind is nevertheless strong enough to master it 
all, to assimilate and incorporate it with the system of his 
thoughts, and so to make it fit in with the organic unity of 
his insight, which, though vast, is always growing. And 
in the process, his own thought, like the bass in an organ, 
always dominates everything, and is never drowned by 
other tones, as happens with minds which are full of mere 
antiquarian lore; where shreds of music, as it were, in 
every key, mingle confusedly, and no fundamental noU 
is heard at all. 

Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken 
their wisdom from books, are like people who have ob- 
tained precise information about a country from the 
descriptions of many travelers. Such people can tell a 
great deal about it; but, after all, they have no connected, 
clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But 
those who have spent their lives in thinking resemble the 
travelers themselves; they alone really know what they 
are talking about; they are acquainted with the actual 
state of affairs, and are quite at home in the subject. 

The thinker stands in the tame relation to the ordinary 
book-philosopher as an eyewitness does to the historian; 
he speaks from direct knowledge of his own. That is why 
all those who think for themselves come, at bottom, to 
much the same conclusion. The differences they present 
are due to their different points of view; and when these 
do not affect the matter, they all speak alike. The\ 
merely express the result of their own objective perception 



326 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

of things. There are many passages in my works which I 
have given to the public only after some hesitation, be- 
cause of their paradoxical nature; and afterward I have 
experienced a pleasant surprise in finding the same opinion 
recorded in the works of great men who lived long ago. 

The book-philosopher merely reports what one person 
has said and another meant, or the objections raised by a 
third, and so on. He compares different opinions, ponders, 
criticises, and tries to get at the truth of the matter; here- 
in on a par with the critical historian. For instance, he 
will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for some 
time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature. 
The curious student of such matters may find conspicuous 
examples of what I mean in Herbart's "Analytical Eluci- 
dation of Morality and Natural Right," and in the same 
author's "Letters on Freedom." Surprise may be felt that a 
man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble; 
for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter 
for himself, he would speedily attain his object by the ex- 
ercise of a little thought. But there is a small difficulty 
in the way. It does not depend upon his own will. A 
man can always sit down and read, but not — think. It is 
with thoughts as with men: they cannot always be sum- 
moned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come. 
Thought about a subject must appear of itself, by a happy 
and harmonious combination of external stimulus with 
mental temper and attention; and it is just that which 
never seems to come to these people. 

This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the 
case of matters affecting our own personal interest. When 
it is necessary to come to some resolution in a matter of 
that kind, we cannot well sit down at any given moment 
and think over the merits of the case and make up our 
mind; for, if we try to do so, we often find ourselves un- 
able, at that particular moment, to keep our mind fixed 
upon the subject; it wanders off to other things. Aversion 
to the matter in question is sometimes to blame for this. 
In such a case we should not use force, but wait for the 
proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often comes 
unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety 
of temper in which we approach it at different moments 
puts the matter always in a fresh light. It is this long 
process which is understood by the term" a ripe resolution/ 



ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 327 

For the work of coming to a resolution must be distrib- 
uted; and in the process much that is overlooked at 
one moment occurs to us at another; and the repugnance 
vanishes when we find, as we usually do, on a closer in- 
spection, that things are not so bad as they seemed. 

This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to 
matters of practice. A man must wait for the right mo- 
ment. Not even the greatest mind is capable of thinking 
for itself at all times. Hence a great mind does well to 
spend its leisure in reading, which, as I have said, is a sub- 
stitute for thought: it brings stuff to the mind by letting 
another person do the thinking; although that is always 
done in a manner not our own. Therefore, a man should 
not read too much, in order that his mind may not become 
accustomed to the substitute and thereby forget the reality; 
that it may not form the habit of walking in well-worn 
paths; nor by following an alien course of thought grow a 
stranger to its own. Least of all should a man quite with- 
draw his gaze from trie real world for the mere sake of 
reading; as the impulse and the temper which prompt to 
thought of one's own come far oftener from the world of 
reality than from the world of books. The real life that a 
man sees before him is the natural subject of thought; and 
in its strength as the primary element of existence, it can 
more easily thananythingelse rouse and influence the think- 
ing mind. 

After these considerations, it will not be matter for sur- 
prise that a man who thinks for himself can easily be dis- 
tinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in 
which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the origi- 
nality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all 
his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on 
the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is sec- 
ond-hand; that his ideas are like the lumber and trash of 
old furniture-shop, collected together from all quarters. 
Mentally, he is dull and pointless — a copy of a copy. His 
literary style is made up of conventional, nay, vulgar 
phrases, and terms that happen to be current; in this re- 
spect much like a small state where all the money that 
circulates is foreign, because it has no coinage of its own. 

Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place 
of thought. It stands to thinking in the same relation in 
which eating stands to digestion and assimilation. When 



328 1 HE ART OF LITERATURE 

experience boasts that to its discoveries alone is due tht 
advancement of the human race, it is as though the mouth 
were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the body in 
health. 

The works of all truly capable minds are distinguished 
by a character of decision and definiteness, which means 
that they are clear and free from obscurity. A truly cap- 
able mind always 'knows definitely and clearly what it is 
that it wants to express, whether its medium is prose, 
verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive and not- 
definite; and by this they may be known for what they 
are. 

The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order ii 
that it always judges at first hand. Everything it ad* 
vances is the result of thinking for itself; and this is every* 
where evident by the way in which it gives its thoughts 
utterance. Such a mind is like a prince. In the realm of 
intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the authority of 
minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen 
in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own. 

Every one who really thinks for himself is so far like a 
monarch. His position is undelegated and supreme. H'S 
judgments, like royal decrees, spring from his own sover- 
eign power and proceed directly from himself. He ac- 
knowledges authority as little as a monarch admits a com- 
mand; he subscribes to nothing but what he has himself 
authorized. The multitude of common minds, laboring 
under all sorts of current opinions, authorities, prejudices, 
is like the people, which silently obeys the law and accepts 
orders from above. 

Those who are so zealous and eager to settle debated 
questions by citing authorities, are really glad when they 
are able to put the understanding and the insight of others 
into the field in place of their own, which are wanting. 
Their number is legion. For, as Seneca says, there is no 
man but prefers belief to the exercise of judgment — unus- 
quisque mavult credere quam judicare. In their contro- 
versies such people make a promiscuous use of the weapon 
of authority, and strike out at one another with it. If any 
one chances to become involved in such a contest, he will 
do well not to try reason and argument as a mode of de- 
fense; for against a weapon of that kind these people are 
.like Siegfrieds, with a skin of horn, and dipped in the flood 



ON THINKING FOR OXES SELF. 329 

of incapacity fcr thinking and judging. They will meet 
Ins attack by bringing up their authorities as a way of 
abashing him — argumentum ad verecundia?n, and then cry 
out that they have won the battle. 

In the real world, be it never so fair, favorable and pleas- 
ant, we always live subject to the law of gravity, which we 
have to be constantly overcoming. But in the world of 
intellect we are disembodied spirits, held in bondage to no 
such law, and free from penury and distress. Thus it is 
that there exists no happiness on earth like that which, at 
the auspicious moment, a fine and fruitful mind finds in 
itself. 

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a 
woman we love. We fancy we shall never forget the 
thought nor become indifferent to the dear one. But out 
of sight, out of mind! The finest thought runs the risk 
of being irrevocably forgotten if we do not write it down, 
and the darling of being deserted if we do not marry her. 

There are plenty of thoughts which are valuable to the 
man who thinks them; but oidy few of them which have 
enough strength to produce repercussive or reflex action — 
I mean, to win the reader's sympathy after they have been 
put on paper. 

But still it must not be forgotten that a true value 
attaches only to what a man has thought in the first in- 
stance for his own case. Thinkers may be classed according 
as they think chiefly for their own case or for that of others. 
The former are the genuine independent thinkers; they 
really think and are really independent; they are the true 
philosophers; they alone are in earnest. The pleasure and 
the happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The 
others are the sophists; they want to seem that which they 
are not, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get 
from the world. They are in earnest about nothing else. 
To which of these two classes a man belongs may be seen 
by his whole style and manner. Lichtenberg is an example 
for the former class; Herder, there can be no doubt, be- 
longs to the second. 

When one considers how vast and how close to us is the 
problem of existence — this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, 
dream-like existence of ours — so vast and so close that a 
man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures 
all other problems and aims; and when one sees how all 



330 THE ART OF LI TEN A TURE. 

men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear conscious 
ness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite unaware of its 
presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than 
with this, and live on, taking no thought but for the pass- 
ing day and the hardly longer span of their own personal 
future, either expressly discarding the problem or else 
over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting some sys- 
tem of popular metaphysics and letcing it satisfy them; 
when, I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the 
opinion that man may be said to be a thinking being only 
in a very remote sense, and henceforth feel no special sur- 
prise at any trait of human thoughtlessnes or folly; but 
know, rather, that the normal man's intellectual range of 
vision does indeed extend beyond that of the brute, whose 
whole existence is, as it were, a continual present, with no 
consciousness of the past or the future, but not such an 
immeasurable distance as is generally supposed. 

This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in which most 
men converse; where their thoughts are found to be 
chopped up fine, like chaff, so that for them to spin out a 
discourse of any length is impossible. 

If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, it 
could never be that the noise of every kind would be 
allowed such generous limits, as in the case with the most 
horrible and at the same time aimless form of it.* Jf na- 
ture had meant man to think, she would not have given 
him ears: or, at any rate, she would have furnished them 
with air-tight flaps, such as are the enviable possession of the 
bat. But, in truth, man is a poor animal like the rest, and 
his powers are meant only to maintain him in the struggle 
for existence; so he must needs keep his ears always open, 
to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the ap- 
proach of the pursuer. 



ON SOME FOxvMS OF LITERATURE. 

In the drama which is the most perfect reflection oi 
Human existence, there are three stages in the presentation 
of the subject, with a corresponding variety in the design 
and scope of the piece. 

* Translator's note. — Schopenhauer refers to the cracking of 
•thins. Seethe essay " On Noise" in " Studies in Pessimism." 



ON SOME FORMS OF LITER A TV HE. 33 1 

At the first, which is also the most common stage, the 
4rama is never anything more than merely interesting. 
The persons gain our attention by following their own aims 
which resemble ours; the action advances by means of in- 
trigue and the play of character and incident; while wit 
and raillery season the whole. . 

At the second stage, the drama becomes sentimental. 
Sympathy is roused with the hero, and, indirectly, with 
ourselves. The action takes a pathetic turn; but the end is 
peaceful and satisfactory. 

The climax is reached with the third stage, which is the 
most difficult. There the drama aims at being tragic. We 
are brought face to face with great suffering and the storm 
and stress of existence; and the outcome of it is to show 
the vanity of all human effort. Deeply moved, we are 
either directly prompted to disengage our will from the 
struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which echoes 
a similar feeling. 

The beginning, it is said, is always difficult. In the 
drama it is just the contrary; for there the difficulty always 
lies in the end. This is proved by countless plays which 
promise very well for the first act or two, and then become 
muddled, stick or falter — notoriously so in the fourth act — 
and finally conclude in a way that is either forced or 
unsatisfactory or else long foreseen by every one. Some- 
times, too, the end is positively revolting, as in Les- 
sing's " Emilia Galotti," which sends the spectators home 
in a temper. 

This difficulty in regard to the end of a play arises 
partly because it is everywhere easier to get things into a 
tangle than to get them out again; partly also because at 
the beginning we give the author carte blanche to do as he 
likes, but, at the end, make certain definite demands upon 
him. Thus we ask for a conclusion that shall be either 
quite happy or else quite tragic; whereas human affairs do 
not easily take so decided a turn; and then we expect that 
it shall be natural, fit and proper, unlabored, and at the 
same time foreseen by no one. 

These remarks are also applicable to an epic and to a 
novel; but the more compact nature of the drama makee 
the difficulty plainer by increasing it. 

E nihilo nihil fit. That nothing can come from nothio£ 



332 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

is a maxim true in fine art as elsewhere. In composing an 
historical picture, a good artist will use living men as a 
model, and take the ground work of the faces from life; and 
then proceed to idealize them in point of beauty or ex- 
pression. A similar method, I fancy, is adopted by good 
novelists. In drawing a character they take the general 
outline of it from some real person of their acquaint- 
ance, and then idealize and complete it to suit their 
purpose. 

A novel will be of a high and noble order, the more it 
represents of inner, and the less it represents of outer, life; 
and the ratio between the two will supply a means of judg- 
ing any novel, of whatever kind, from" Tristram Shandy" 
down to the crudest and most sensational tale of knight or 
robber. "Tristram Shandy" has, indeed, as good as no action 
at all; and there is not much in " La Nouvelle Ileloise " and 
" Wilhelm Meister." Even " Don Quixote " has relatively 
little; and what there is, is very unimportant, and intro- 
duced merely for the sake of fun. And these four are the 
best of all existing novels. 

Consider, further, the wonderful romances of Jean Paul, 
and how much inner life is shown on the narrowest basis 
of actual event. Even in Walter Scott's novels there is a 
great preponderance of inner over outer life, and incident 
is never brought in except for the purpose of giving play 
to thought and emotion; whereas, in bad novels, incident 
is there on its own account. Skill consists in setting the 
inner life in motion with the smallest possible array of cir- 
cumstances, for it is this inner life that realh excites our 
interest. 

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, 
but to make small ones interesting. 

History, which I like to think of as the contrary of 
poetry (i6ropov/ievov — itETtoirjuivov), is for time what geogra* 
phy is for space; and it is no more to be called a science, 
in any strict sense of the word, than is geography, because 
it does not deal with universal truths, but only with par- 
ticular details.* History has always been the favorite 

* Translator s Note. — This line of argument is not likely to be 
popular nowadays, but if the reader is interested by it, he will find 
it more fully stated in " Die WeJt "Is Wille und Vorstellung," VoL 
II., c. 38. 



OK SOME FORMS OF LITERATUHE. 333 

study of those who wish to learn something, without hav- 
ing to face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowl- 
edge, which taxes the intelligence. In our time history is 
a favorite pursuit; as witness the numerous books upon 
the subject which appear every year. 

If the reader cannot help thinking, with me, that history 
is merely the constant recurrence of similar things, just as 
in a kaleidoscope the same bits of glass are presented, but 
in different combinations, he will not be able to share all 
this lively interest; nor, however, will he censure it. But 
there is a ridiculous and absurd claim, made by many peo- 
ple, to regard history as ^ part of philosophy, nay, as phi- 
losophy itself; they imagine that history can take its place. 

The preference shown for history by the greater public 
in all ages may be illustrated by the kind of conversation 
which is so much in vogue everywhere in society. It gen- 
erally consists in one person relating something and then 
another person relating something else; so that in this way 
every one is sure of receiving attention. Both here and in 
the case of history it is plain that the mind is occupied 
with particular details. But as in science, so also in every 
worthy conversation, the mind rises to the consideration 
of some general truth. 

This objection does not, howewr, deprive history of its 
vilr.e. Human life is short am. Meeting, and many mil- 
lions of individuals share in it. who are swallowed by that 
monster of oblivion which is waiting for them with ever- 
open jaws. It is thus a very thankworthy task to try to 
rescue something — the memory of interesting and impor- 
tant events, of the leading features and personages of some 
epoch — from the general shipwreck of the world. 

From another point of view, we might look upon history 
as the sequel to zoology; for while with all other animals 
it is enough to observe the species, with man individuals, 
and therefore individual events, have to be studied; be- 
cause every man possesses a character of an individual. 
And since individuals and events are without number or 
end, an essential imperfection attaches to history. In the 
study of it, all that a man learns never contributes to 
lessen that which he has still to learn. With any real 
science, a perfection of knowledge is, at any rate, conceiv- 
able. 

When we gain access to the histories of China and of 



334 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

India, the endlessness of the subject-matter will reveal to 
us the defects in the study, and force our historians to see 
that the object of science is to recognize the many in the 
one, to perceive the rules in any given example, and to 
apply to the life of nations a knowledge of mankind; not 
to go on counting up facts ad infinitum. 

There are two kinds of history; the history of politics 
and the history of literature and art. The one is the his- 
tory of the will; the other, that of the intellect. The first 
is a tale of woe, even of terror: it is a record of agony, 
struggle, fraud, and horrible murder en masse. The 
second is everywhere pleasing and serene, like the intellect 
when left to itself, even though its path be one of error. 
Its chief branch is the history of philosophy. This is, in 
fact, its fundamental base, and the notes of it are heard 
even in the other kind of history. These deep tones guide 
the formation of opinion, and opinion rules the world. 
Hence philosophy, rightly understood, is a material force 
of the most powerful kind, though very slow in its work- 
ing. The philosophy of a period is thus the fundamental 
base of its history. 

The newspaper is the second-hand in the clock of his- 
tory; and it is not only made of baser metal than those 
which point to the minute and the hour, but it seldom 
goes right. 

The so-called leading article is the chorus to the drama 
of passing events. 

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism 
as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is 
to make events go as far as possible. Thus it is that all 
journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarm- 
ists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they 
write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, 
they immediately set up a shrill bark. 

Therefore, let us carefully regulate the attention to be 
paid to this trumpet of danger, so that it may not disturb 
our digestion. Let us recognize that a newspaper is at 
best but a magnifying-glass, and very often merely a 
shadow on the wall. 

The pen is to thought what the stick is to walking; but 
you walk most easily when you have no stick, and .you 



ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 335 

think with the greatest perfection when you have no pen 
in your hand. It is only when a man begins to be old that 
he likes to use a stick and is glad to take up his pen. 

When an hypothesis has once come to birth in the mind, 
or gained a footing there, it leads a life so far comparable 
with the life of an organism, as that it assimilates matter 
from the outer world only when it is like in kind witli it 
and beneficial; and when, contrariiy, such matter is not 
like in kind but hurtful, the hypothesis, equally with the 
organism, throws it off, or, if forced to take it, gets rid of 
it again entire. 

To gain immortality an author must possess so many 
excellences that, while it will not be easy to find any one 
to understand and appreciate them all, there will be men 
in every age who are able to recognize and value some of 
them. In this way the credit of his book will be main- 
tained throughout the long course of centuries, in spite of 
the fact that human interests are always changing. 

An author like this, who has a claim to the continuance 
of his life even with posterity, can only be a man who, 
over the wide earth, will seek his like in vain, and offer a 
palpable contrast with every one else in virtue of his un- 
mistakable distinction. Nay more: were he, like the wan- 
dering Jew, to live through several generations, he would 
still remain in the same superior position. If this were 
not so, it would be difficult to see why his thoughts should 
not perish like those of other men. 

Metaphors and similes are of great value, in so far as 
Miey explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even 
Hie more detailed smile which grows into a parable or an 
allegory, is nothing more than the exhibition of some re- 
lation in its simplest, most visible and palpable fovm. 
The growth of ideas rests, at bottom, upon similes; be- 
cause ideas arise by a process of combining the similarities 
and neglecting the differences between things. Further, 
intelligence, in the strict sense of the word, ultimately 
consists in a seizing of relations; and a clear and pure 
grasp of relations is all the more often attained when the 
comparison is made between cases that lie wide apart from 
one another, and between things of quite different nature. 
As long as a relation is known to me as existing only in a 



336 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

single case, I have none but an individual idea of it — in 
other words, only an intuitive or perceptive knowledge of 
it; but as soon as I see the same relation in two different 
cases, I have a general idea of its whole nature, and this i£ 
a deeper and more perfect knowledge. 

Since, then, similes and metaphors are such a powerful 
engine of knowledge, it is a sign of great intelligence in a 
writer if bis similes are unusual and, at tbe same time, tc 
the point. Aristotle also observes tbat by far the most 
important thing to a writer is to have this power of meta- 
phor; for it is a gift which cannot be acquired, and it is a 
mark of genius.* 

As regards reading, to require that a man shall retain 
everything he has ever read, is like asking him to carry 
about with him all he has ever eaten. The one kind of 
food has given him bodily, and the other mental nourish- 
ment; and it is through these two means that he has grown 
to be what he is. The body assimilates only that which is 
like it; and so a man retains in his mind only that which 
interests him, in other words, that which suits his system 
of thought or his purposes in life. Every one has pur- 
poses, no doubt; but very few have anything like a system 
of thought. Few people take an objective interest in any- 
thing, and so their reading does them no good; they retain 
nothing. 

If a man wants to read good books, he must make 
a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time 
and energy limited. 

Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any book that is at 
all important ought to be at once read through twice; 
partly because, on a second reading, the connection of the 
different portions of the book will be better understood, 
and the beginning comprehended only when the end is 
known; and partly because we are not in the same 
temper and disposition on both readings. On the second 
perusal we get a new view of every passage and a different 
impression of the whole book, which then appears in 
another light. 

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also 
buy the time in which to read them; but generally the pur- 

*" Poetics," c. 22. 



vitf CRITICISM. 33? 

chase of a book is mistaken for the acquisition of its con- 
tents. 

A man's works are the quintessence of his mind, 
and even though he may possess very great capacity the)' 
will always be incomparably more valuable than his con- 
versation. Nay, in all essential matters his works will not 
only make up for the lack of personal intercourse with 
him. but they will far surpass it in solid advantages. The 
writings even of a man of moderate genius may be edify- 
ing, worth reading and instructive, because they are his 
quintessence — the result and fruit of all his thought and 
study; while conversation with him may be unsatis- 
factory. 

So it is that we can read books by men in whose company 
we find nothing to please, and that a high degree of cul- 
ture leads us to seek entertainment almost wholly from 
books and not from men. 



ON CRITICISM. 

The following brief remarks on the critical faculty are 
chiefly intended to show that, for the most part, there is 
no such thing. It is a vara avis; almost as rare, indeed, 
as the phoenix, which appears ordy once in five hundred 
years. 

When we speak of taste — an expression not chosen 
with any regard for it — we mean the discovery, or, it may 
be only the recognition, of what is right aesthetically, 
apart from the guidance of any rule; and this, either 
because no rule has as yet been extended to the matter in 
question, or else because, if existing, it is unknown to the 
artist, or the critic, as the case may be. Instead of taste, 
we might use the expression aesthetic sense, if this were not 
tautological. 

The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the female 
analogue to the male quality of productive talent or genius. 
Not capable of begetting great work itself, it consists in a 
capacity of reception, that is to say, of recognizing as such 
what is right, fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words, 
of discriminating the good from the bad, of discovering 
and appreciating the one and condemning the other. 

In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal with 



338 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

the errors in his productions or with the poorer of his 
works, and then proceed to rate him low; it should attend 
outy to the qualities in which he most excels. For in the 
sphere of intellect, as in other spheres, weakness and per- 
rersity cleave so firmly to human nature that even the 
;iiost brilliant mind is not wholly and at all times free from 
fthem. Hence the great errors to be found even in the 
vorks of the greatest men; or as Horace puts it, quandoque 
''tonus dormitat Homerus. 

That which distinguishes genius, and should be the 
fetandard for judging it, is the height to which it is able to 
eoar when it is in the proper mood and finds a fitting 
occasion — a height always out of the reach of ordinary 
talent. And, in like manner, it is a very dangerous thing 
to compare two great men of the same class; for instance, 
two great poets, or musicians, or philosophers, or artists; 
because injustice to the one or the other, at least for the 
moment, can hardly be avoided. For in making a com- 
parison of the kind the critic looks to some particular 
merit of the one and at once discovers that it is absent in 
the other, who is thereby disparaged. And then if the 
process is reversed, and the critic begins with the latter 
and discovers his peculiar merit, which is quite of a differ- 
ent order from that presented by the former, with whom 
it may be looked for in vain, the result is that both of them 
suffer undue depreciation. 

There are critics who severally think that it rests with 
each one of them what shall be accounted good, and what 
bad. They all mistake their own toy-trumpets for the 
trombones of fame. 

A drug does not effect its purpose if the dose is too large; 
and it is the same with censure and adverse criticism when 
it exceeds the measure of justice. 

The disastrous thing for intellectual merit is that it 
must wa/t for those to praise the good who have them- 
selves produced nothing but what is bad; nay, it is a 
primary misfortune that it has to receive its crown at the 
hands of the critical power of mankind — a quality of 
which most men possess only the weak and impotent sem- 
blance, so that the reality may be numbered among the 
rarest gifts of nature. Hence La Bruveie's remark is, un- 
happily, as true as it is neat. "Apres V esprit de discerne- 
vrent" he says, " ce qn'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont 



ON CRITICISM. 339 

le» diamanset les perles." The spirit of discernment! the 
critical faculty! it is these that are lacking. Men do not 
know how to distinguish the genuine from the false, the 
corn from the chaff, gold from copper; or to perceive the 
wide gulf that separates a genius from an ordinary man. 
Thus we have that bad state of tilings described in an old- 
fashioned verse, which gives it as the lot of the great ones 
nere on earth to be recognized only when they are gone: 

"Es ist nuui das Gescbick der Grossen bier auf Erden, 
Erst vvann sie nicht melir sind. von uns erkannt zu werden." 

When any genuine and excellent work makes its ap- 
pearance, the chief difficulty in its way is the amount of 
bad work it finds already in possession of the field, and 
accepted as though it were good. And then if, after a 
long time, the new-comer really succeeds, by a hard 
struggle, in vindicating his place for himself and winning 
reputation, he will soon encounter fresh difficulty from 
some affected, dull, awkward imitator, whom people drag 
in, with the object of calmly setting him up on the altar 
beside the genius, not seeing the difference and really 
thinking that here they have to do with another great man. 
This is what Yriarte means by the first lines of his 28th 
Fable, where he declares that the ignorant rabble always 
sets equal value on the good and the bad: 

" Sienipre acost umbra bacer el vulgo necio 
De lo bueno y lo nialo igual aprecio." 

So even Shakespeare's dramas had, immediately after his 
death, to give place to those of Ben Jonson, Massinger, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, and to yield the supremacy for a 
hundred years. So Kant's serious philosophy was crowded 
out by the nonsense of Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Hegel. 
And even in a sphere accessible to all, we have seen un- 
worthy imitators quickly diverting public attention from 
the incomparable Walter Scott. For, say what you will, 
the public has no sense for excellence, and therefore no 
notion how very rare it is to find men really capable of 
doing anything great in poetry, philosophy, or art, or that 
their works are alone worthy of exclusive attention. The 
dabblers., whether in verse or in any other high sphere, 



340 THE A RT OF LITER A TURfi. 

should be every day unsparingly reminded that neither 
gods, nor men, nor booksellers have pardoned their me- 
diocrity: 

" Mediocri bus esse poetis 
Non homines, non Di, non concessere coluinnae." * 

Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up, 
so that they may cover all the ground themselves? And 
then there happens that which has been well and freshly 
described by the lamented Feuchterslebeii,f who died so 
young: how people cry out in their haste that nothing is 
being done, while all the w r hile great work is quietly 
growing to maturity; and then, when it appears, it is not 
seen or heard in the clamor, but goes its way silently, in 
modest grief: 

" 1st docli" — rufun sie vermessen — 
" Nichts im Werke, nicbts getban! " 

Und das Grosse, reift indessen 

Still lieran. 

" Es erscbeint nun: nieinand sieht es, 
Nieinand bort es im Gesclirei. 
Mit bescheid'ner Trauer zieht es 
Still vorbei." 

This lamentable dearth of the critical faculty is not less 
obvious in the case of science, as is shown by the tenacious 
life of false and disproved theories. If they are once aC' 
cepted, they may go on bidding defiance to truth for fifty 
or even a hundred years and more, as stable as an iron pier 
in the midst of the waves. The Ptolemaic system was 
still held a century after Copernicus had promulgated his 
theory. Bacon, Descartes and Locke made their way ex- 
tremely slowly and only after a long time; as the reader 
may see by D'Alembert's celebrated Preface to the " En- 
cyclopaedia." Newton was not more successful; and this 
is sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt with 

* Horace, "Ars Poetica," 372. 

f Translator's Note Ernst Freiberr von Feucbtersleben (1806-49), 
an Austrian pbysician, pbilosopber. and poet, and a specialist 
in medical psycbology. Tbe best known of bis songs is tbat 
beginning " Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath," to wbicb Mendelssobn 
composed one of bis finest melodic 



ON CRITICISM. 341 

which Leibnitz attacked his tbeory of gravitation in tbe 
controversy with Clarke.* Although Newton lived for 
almost forty years after tbe appearance of the " Principia," 
his teaching was, when he died, only to some extent ac- 
cepted in his own country, while outside England he 
counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe tbe 
introductory note to Voltaire's exposition of his theory. 
It was, indeed, chiefly owing to this treatise of Voltaire's 
that the system became known in France nearly twenty 
years after Newton's death. Until then a firm, resolute, 
and patriotic stand was made by the Cartesian " Vortices;" 
while only forty years previously, this same Cartesian phi- 
losophy had been forbidden in the French schools; and 
now in turn d'Agnesseau, the chancellor, refused Voltaire 
the " Imprimatur" for his treatise on the Newtonian doc- 
trine. On the other hand, in our day Newton's absurd 
theory of color still completely holds the field, forty }~ea"S 
after the publication of Goethe's. Hume, too, was disre- 
garded up to his fiftieth year, though he began very early 
and wrote in a thoroughly popular style. And Kant, in 
spite of having written and talked all his life long, did not 
become a famous man until he was sixty. 

Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than 
thinkers, because their public is at least a hundred times as 
large. Still, what was thought of Beethoven and Mozart 
during their lives? what of Dante? what even of Shake- 
speare? If the latter's contemporaries had in any way recog- 
nized his worth, at least one good and accredited portrait 
of him would have come down to us from an age when the 
art of painting flourished; whereas we possess only some 
very doubtful pictures, a bad copperplate, and a still 
worse bust on his tomb.* And in like manner, if he had 
been duly honored, specimens of his handwriting would 
have been preserved to us by the hundred, instead of being 
confined, as is the case, to the signatures to a few legal 
documents. The Portuguese are still proud of their only 
poet Camoens. He lived, however, on alms coliected every 
evening in the street by a black slave whom he had 

*See especially §§ 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128. 

*A. Wivell. " An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity, and 
Characteristics of Shakespeare's Portraits;" with 21 engravings 
London, 1836. 



342 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

brought with him from the Indies. In time, no doubt, 
justice will be done to every one; tempo e galanf uomoj 
but it as late and slow in arriving as in a court of law, and 
the secret condition of it is that the recipient shall be no 
J.onger alive. The precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is 
faithfully followed: "Judge none blessed before his 
death.''* He, then, who has produced immortal works, 
must find comfort by applying to them the words of 
the Indian myth, that the minutes of life among the im- 
mortals seem like years of earthly existence; and so, too, 
that years upon earth are only as the minutes of the im- 
mortals. 

This lack of critical insight is also shown by the fact 
that, while in every century the excellent work of earlier 
time is held in honor, that of its own is misunderstood, 
and the attention which is its due is given to bad work, 
such as every decade carries with it only to be the sport of 
the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit 
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do 
not understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowl- 
edged works of genius, which they honor only on the score 
of authority. The crucial test is the fact that bad work — 
Fichte's philosophy, for example — if it wins any reputation, 
also maintains it for one or two generations; and only when 
its public is very large does its fall follow sooner. 

Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye 
that sees it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the 
value of all masterly work in art and science is conditioned 
by the kinship and capacity of the mind to which it speaks. 
It is only such a mind as this that possesses the magic word 
to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great 
work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed 
cabinet of mystery, an unfamiliar musical instrument from 
which the player, however much he may flatter himself, 
can draw none but confused tones. How different a paint- 
ing looks when seen in a good light, instead of in some 
dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made 
by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind to 
understand it. 

A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty, 
a thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to 

* Ecclesiasticus, xi. 28. 



ON CRITICISM. 343 

exist and live at all. But alas! it may happen only too 
often that he who gives a fine work to the world afterward 
feels like a maker of fireworks, "who displays with enthu- 
siasm the wonders that have taken him so much time and 
trouble to prepare, and then learns that he has come to the 
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and 
all inmates of an asylum for the blind. Still, even that is 
better than if his public had consisted entirely of men whc» 
made fireworks themselves; as in this case, if his display 
had been extraordinarily good, it might possibly have cost 
him his head. 

The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of 
kinship. Even with the sense of beauty it is unquestion- 
ably our own species in the animal world, and then again 
our own race, that appears to us the fairest. So too in 
intercourse with others, every man shows a decided prefer- 
ence for those who resemble him: and a blockhead will 
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more 
pleasant than that of any number of great minds puf, 
together. Every man must necessarily take his chief 
pleasure in his own work, because it is the mirror of his 
own mind, the echo of his own thought; and next in order 
will come the work of people like him; that is to say, a 
dull, shallow and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, 
will give his sincere and hearty applause only to that which 
is dull, shallow, perverse or merely verbose. On the other 
hand, he will allow merit to the work of great minds only 
on the score of authority, in other words because he is 
ashamed to speak his opinion; for in reality they give him 
no pleasure at all. They do not appeal to him; nay, they 
repel him; and he will not confess this even to himself. 
The works of genius cannot be fully enjoyed except by 
those who are themselves of the privileged order. The 
first recognition of them, however, when they exist without 
authority to support them, demands considerable superiority 
of mind. 

When the reader takes all this into consideration, he 
should be surprised, not that great work is so late in win- 
ning reputation but that it wins it at all. And as a matter 
of fact, fame comes only by a slow and complex process. 
The stupid person is by degrees forced, and as it were 
tamed, into recognizing the superiority of one who standb 
immediately above him: this one in his turn bows before 



344 THE ART OF LlThRATURW. 

some one else; and so it goes on until the weight of the 
votes gradually prevail over their number ; and this is just 
the condition of all genuine, in other words, deserved 
fame. But until then, the greatest genius, even after he has 
passed his time of trial, stands like a king amid a crowd of 
his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and 
therefore will not do his behests; unless, indeed, his chief 
ministers of state are in his train. For no subordinate 
official can be the direct recipient of the royal commands, 
as he knows only the signature of his immediate superior; 
and this is repeated all the way up into the highest ranks, 
where the under-secretary attests the minister's signature, 
and the minister that of the king. There are analogous 
stages to be passed before a genius can attain widespread 
fame. This is why his reputation most easily comes to a 
standstill at the very outset; because the highest authori- 
ties, of whom there can be but few, are most frequently not 
to be found ; but the further down he goes in the scale the 
more numerous are those who take the word from above, 
so that his fame is no more arrested. 

We must console ourselves for this state of things by re- 
flecting that it is really fortunate that the greater number 
of men do not form a judgment on their own responsibility 
but merely take it on authority. For what sort of criti- 
cism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer, Shake- 
speare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion 
by what he really has and enjoys of these writers, instead 
of being forced by authority to speak of them in a fit and 
proper way, however little he may really feel what he says. 
Unless something of this kind took place, it would be im- 
possible for true merit, in any high sphere, to attain fame 
at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every 
man has just so much critical power of his own as is nec- 
essary for recognizing the superiority of those who are 
placed immediately over him, and for following their lead. 
This means that the many come in the end to submit to 
the authority of the few; and there results that hierarchy 
of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a 
steady, and eventually wide-reaching fame. 

The lowest class in the community is quite impervious 
to the merits of a great genius ; and for these people there 
is nothing left but the monument raised to him, which, by 
the impression it produces on their senses, awakes in them 



ON CRITICISM. 345 

Literary journals should be a dam against the uncon- 
scionable scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing 
deluge of bad and useless books. Their judgments should 
be uncorrupted, just and rigorous; and every piece of bad 
work done by an incapable person; every device by which 
the empty head tries to come to the assistance of the empty 
purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing 
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals 
would then perform their duty, which is to keep down the 
craving for writing and put a check upon the deception of 
the public, instead of furthering these evils by a 
miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of author 
and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his 
money. 

If there was such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, 
every brainless compiler, every plagiarist from others' 
books, every hollow and incapable place-hunter, every 
sham-philosopher, every vain and languishing poetaster, 
would shudder at the prospect of the pillory in which his 
bad work would ineviiably have to stand soon after publi- 
cation. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the 
true welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only 
useless but positively pernicious. Now, most books are 
bad and ought to have remained unwritten. Consequently 
praise should be as rare as is now the case with blame, 
which is withheld under the influence of personal consider- 
ations, coupled with the maxim " accpdas socins, laude* 
lander is ut absens." 

It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the 
same toleration as must necessarily prevail in society 
toward those stupid, brainless people who everywhere 
swarm in it. In. literature such people are impudent in- 
trailers; and to disparage the bad is here duty toward the 
good; for he who thinks nothing bad will think nothing 
good either. Politeness, which has its source in social 
relations, is in literature an alien, and often injurious, 
element; because it exacts that bad work shall be called 
good. In this way the very aim of science and art is 
directly frustrated. 

This ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by 
people who joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowl- 
edge and still rarer power of judgment; so that perhaps 
there could, at the very most, be one ; and even hardly one, 



346 THE A 12 T OF LITER A TUHB. 

iu the whole country; but there it, would stand, like a just 
Areopagus, every member of which would have to be 
elected by all the others. Under the system that prevails 
at present literary journals are carried on by a clique, and 
secretly perhaps also by booksellers for the good of the 
trade; and they are often nothing but coalitions of bad 
heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As Goethe 
once remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty 
as in literature. 

But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary 
rascality, would have to disappear It was introduced 
under the pratext of protecting the honest critic, who 
warned the public, against the resentment of the author 
and his friends. But where there is one case of this sort, 
there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take all 
responsibi'ity from the man who cannot stand by what he 
has said, or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has 
been cowardly and base enough to recommend a book to 
Uie public for the purpose of putting money into his own 
pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the 
obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic. 
It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, 
and what literary trickery they will venture to commit, as 
soon as they know they are safe under the shadow of 
anonymity. Let me recommend a general anticriticism, a 
universal medicine or panacea, to put a stop to all anony- 
mous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames the 
good: Rascal ! your name! For a man to wrap himself up 
and draw his hat over his fac. , and then fall upon people 
who are walking about without any disguise — this is not 
the part of a gentleman, it is the part of a scoundrel and a 
knave. 

An anonymous review has no more authority than an 
anonymous letter: and one should be received with the 
tame mistrust as the other. Or shall we take the name of 
the man who consents to preside over what is, in the 
strict sense of the word, une societe anonyme as a guarantee 
for the veracity of his colleagues. 

Even Rousseau, in the preface to theXouvelle s< Heloise" 
declares tout lionnete liomme doit avouer le: Hvres qu'il 
publie; which in plain language means that every honorable 
man ought to sign his articles, and that no one is honorable 
who does not do so. How much truer this is of polemical 



ON REP VTA TION. 347 

writing, which is the general character of reviews! Riemer 
was quite right in the opinion he gives in his " Reminis- 
scences of Goethe:" * " An overt enemy/' he says, " an en- 
emy who meets you face to face, is an honorable man, who 
will treat you fairly, and with whom you can come to terms 
and be reconciled: but an enemy who conceals himself " is a 
base, cowardly scoundrel, " who has not courage enough to 
nvow his own judgment: it is not his opinion that he cares 
about, but only the secret pleasure of wreaking his auger 
without being found out or punished." This will also have 
been Goethe's opinion, as he was generally the source fronr 
which Riemer drew his observations. And, indeed, 
Rousseau's maxim applies to every line that is printed. 
Would a man in a mask ever be allowed to harangue i 
mob, or speak in any assembly: and that, too, when hi. 
was going to attack others and overwhelm them with 
abuse? 

Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic 
rascality. It is a practice which must be completely 
stopped. Every article, even in a newspaper, should be 
accompanied by the name 1 of its author; and the editor 
should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the 
signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far 
restricted; so that what a man publicly proclaims through 
the far sounding trumpet of the newspaper, he should be 
answerable for, at any rate with his honor, if he has any; 
and if he has none, let his name neutralize the effect of 
his words. And since even the most insignificant person 
is known in his own circle, the result of such a measure 
would be to put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies, 
and to restrain the audacity of many a poisonous tongue. 



ON REPUTATION. 

Writers may be classified as meteors, planets and fixed 
stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. 
Ton look up and cry There! and it is gone forever. 
Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. 
They often outshine the fixed stars and are confounded 
with them by the inexperienced ; but this is only because they 

* Preface, p. xxi^L. 



348 THE ART OF LITER A TURK 

are near. It is not long before they too must yield their 
place; nay, the light they give is reflected only, and the 
sphere of their influence is confined to their own orbit — ■ 
their contemporaries. Their path is one of change and 
movement, and with the circuit, of a few years their tale is 
told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; 
their position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a 
light of their own; their effect to-day is the same as it was 
yesterday, because, having no parallax, their appearance 
does not alter with a difference in our standpoint. They 
belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the uni- 
verse. And just because they are so very far away, it is 
usually many years before their light is visible to the in- 
habitants of this earth. 

We have seen in the previous chapter that where a man's 
merits are of a high order, it is difficult for him to wiii rep- 
utation, because the public is uncritical and lacks dis- 
cernment. But another and no less serious hindrance to 
fame comes from the envy it has to encounter. For even 
in the lowest kind of work, envy balks even the beginnings 
of a reputation, and never ceases to cleave to it up to the 
last. How great a part is played by envy in the wicked 
ways of the world! Ariosto is right in saying that the 
dark side of our mortal life predominates, so full it is of 
this evil: 

"questa assai piu oscura che serena 
Vita mortal, tutta d'invidia piena. n 

v^or envy is the moving spirit of that secret and informal, 
though flourishing, alliance everywhere made by medioc- 
rity against individual eminence, no matter of what kind. 
In his own sphere of work no one will allow another to be 
distinguished: he is an intruder who cannot be tolerated. 
Si quelqu'un excelle parmi nous, qu'il aille exceller ailleurs! 
(this is the universal password of the second-rate. In addi- 
tion, Uien, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it 
has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of 
thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on surpress- 
ing, nay, on smothering it altogether. No one is take:, 
for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this 
is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction, 
by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly bf 
prevented. 



OK REP UTA TION. 349 

There are two ways of behaving in regard to merit: 
either to have fame of one's own, or to refuse any to others. 
The latter method is more convenient, and so it is gener- 
ally adopted. As envy is a mere sign of of deficiency, so 
to envy merit argues the lack of it. My excellent Baltha- 
zar Gracian has given a very fine account of this relation 
between envy and merit in a lengthy fable, which may be 
found in his " Discreto "under the heading " Hombrede os- 
tentation/' He describes all the birds as meeting together 
and conspiring against the peacock, because of his magnifi- 
cent feathers: "If," said the magpie, "we could only man- 
age to put a stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there 
would soon be an end of his beauty; for what is not seen 
is as good as what does not exist." 

This explains how modesty came to be a virtue. It was 
invented only as a protection against envy. That there 
have always been rascals to urge this virtue, and to rejoice 
heartily over the bashful ness of a man of merit, has been 
shown at length in my chief work.* In Lichtenberg's 
"Miscellaneous Writings," I find this sentence quoted: 
"Modesty should be the virtue of those who possess nc 
other." Goethe has a well-known saying, which offend; 
many people: " It is only knaves who are modest! " — JVm 
die Lumpen sind bescheiden! but it has its prototype in 
Cervantes, who includes in his "Journey up Parnassus,''' 
certain rules of conduct for poets, and among them the 
following: " Every one whose verse shows him to be a poet 
should have a high opinion of himself, relying on the 
proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one." And 
Shakespeare, in mauy of his Sonnets, which gave him the 
only opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares, 
with a confidence equal to his ingenuousness, that what he 
writes is immortal. f 

* "Welt als Wille," Vol. IT. c. 37. 

f Collier, one of his critical editors, in his " Introduction to the 
Sonnets," remarks upon this point : "In many of them are be found 
most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of assurance in 
the immortality of his verses, and in this respect the author's opinion 
was constant and uniform. He never scruples to express it . . . 
and perhaps there is no writer of ancient or modern times who, for 
the quantity of such writings left behind him, has so frequently or 
oso strongly declared that what he had produced in this department 
of poetry 'the world would not willingly let die.' " 



350 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

A method of underrating good work often used by env} 
— in reality, however, only the obverse side of it — consists 
in the dishonorable and unscrupulous laudation of the bad; 
for no sooner does bad work gain currency than it draws 
attention from the good. But however effective this 
method may be for awhile, especially if it is applied on a 
large scale, the day of reckoning comes at last, and the 
fleeting credit given to bad work is paid off by the lasting 
discredit which overtakes those who abjectly praised it. 
Hence these critics prefer to remain anonymous. 

A like fate threatens, though more remotely, those who 
depreciate and censure good work: and consequently many 
are too prudent to attempt it. But there is another way; 
and when a man of eminent merit appears, the first effect 
he produces is often only to pique all his rivals, just as the 
peacock's tail offended the birds. This reduces them to a 
deep silence; and their silence is so unanimous that it 
Mavors of preconception. Their tongues are all paralyzed, 
tt is the silentium livoris described by Seneca. This ma- 
licious silence, which is technically known as ignoring, may 
for a long time interfere with the growth of reputation; if, 
as happens in the higher walks of learning, where a man's 
immediate audience is wholly composed of rival workers 
and professed students, who then form the channel of his 
fame, the greater public is obliged to use its suffrage with- 
out being able to examine the matter for itself. And if, in 
the end, that malicious silence is broken in upon by the 
voice of praise, it will be but seldom that this happens 
entirely apart from some ulterior aim, pursued by those 
who thus manipulate justice. For, as Goethe says in the 
fl West-ostlicher Divan," a man can get no recognition, 
either from many persons or from only one, unless it is to 
publish abroad the critic's own discernment: 

" Derm es ist kein Anerkennen, 
Weder Vieler, nocli des Einen, 
Wenn es niclit am Tagoe frdert, 
Wo man selbst was moclite scheinen." 

The credit you allow to another man engaged in work 
similar to your own op akin to it, must at bottom be with- 
drawn from yourself; and you can praise him only at the 
expense of your own claims. 
Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined to 



ON REP TIT A TION. 351 

award praise and reputation; it is more disposed to blame 
and find fault, whereby it indirectly praises itself. If, 
notwithstanding this, praise is won from mankind, some 
extraneous motive must prevail. I am not here referring 
to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff 
one another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual 
motive is supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of 
doing something one's self, conies that of correctly appre- 
ciating and recognizing what others have done. This ac- 
cords with the three-fold division of heads drawn up by 
Hesiod,* and afterward by Machiavelli. f "There are," says 
the latter/' in the capacities of mankind, three varieties: 
one man will understand a thing by himself; another so 
far as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself 
nor when it is put clearly before him." He, then, who 
abandons hope of making good his claim* to the first class, 
will be glad to seize the opportunity of taking a place in 
the second. It is almost wholly owing to this state oi 
things that merit may always rest assured of ultimately 
meeting with recognition, 

To this also is due the fact that when the value of a 
work has once been recognized and may no longer be con- 
cealed or denied, all men vie in praising and honoring it; 
simply because they are conscious of thereby doing them- 
selves an honor. They act in the spirit of Xenophon's 
remark: "he must be a wise man who knows what is wise." 
So when they see that the prize of original merit is forever 
out of their reach, they hasten to possess themselves of 
that which ccmes second best — the correct appreciation of 
it. Here it happens as with an army which has been 
forced to yield; when, just as previously every man wanted 
to be foremost in the fight, so now every man tries to be 
foremost in running away. They all hurry forward to 
offer their applause to one who is now recognized to be 
worthy of praise, in virtue of a recognition, as a rule un- 
conscious, of that law of homogeneity which I mentioned 
in the last chapter; so that it may seem as though their 
way of thinking and looking at things were homogeneous 
with that of the celebrated man, and that they may at 
least save the honor of their literary taste, since nothing 
else is left them. 

* " Works and Days, 293". \ "The Prince, ch. 22." 



352 1HE ART OF LITERA TURE. 

From this it is plain that, whereas it is very difficult to 
win fame, it is not hard to keep it when once attained; 
and also that a reputation which comes quickly does not 
last very long; for here too, quod cito fit, cito peril. It is 
obvious that if the ordinary, average man can easily 
recognize, and the rival workers willingly acknowledge, 
the value of any performance, it will not stand very much 
above the capacity of either of them to achieve it for them- 
selves. Tantum quisque laudat, quantum se posse spend 
imitari — a man will praise a thing only so far as he hopes 
to be able to imitate it himself. Further, it is a 
suspicious sign if a reputation comes quickly; for an 
application of the laws of homogeneity will show that such 
a reputation is nothing but the direct applause of the multi- 
tude. What this means may le seen by a remark once made 
by Phocion, when he was interrupted in a speech by the 
loud cheers of the mob. Turning to his friends who were 
standing close by, he asked: " Have I made a mistake and 
said something stupid?"* 

Contrarily, a reputation that is to last a long time must 
be slow in maturing, and the centuries of its duration have 
generally to be bought at the cost of contemporary praise. 
For that which is to keep its position so long, must be of a 
perfection difficult to attain; and even to recognize this 
perfection requires men who are not always to be found, 
and never in numbers sufficiently great to make themselves 
heard; whereas envy is always on the watch and doing its 
best to smother their voice. But with moderate talent, 
which soon meets with recognition, there is the danger 
that those whopossessit will outlive both it and themselves; 
so that a youth of fame may be followed by an old age of 
obscurity. In the case of great merit, on the other hand, 
a man may remain unknown for many years, but make up 
for it later on by attaining a brilliant reputation. And if 
it should be that this comes only after he is no more, well! 
he is to be reckoned among those of whom Jean Paul says 
that extreme unction is their baptism. He may console 
himself by thinking of the saints, who also are canonized 
only after they are dead. 

Thus what Mahlmanirf has said so well in " Herod es " 



* Plutarch; "Apothegms." 

f Translator's Note. — Aue-ust Mahlmann (1771-1826), journalist 



ON R KP VTA Tioy. 353 

nolds good: in this world truly great work never pleases at 
once, and the god set up by the multitude keeps his place 
on the altar but a short time: 

" Ich denke. das wahre Grosse in der Welt 
Is: immer nur Das was nicht gleicb gefallt 
Und we:: lei Pobel nun Gtatte weiht 
Bersteht aaf dem Altar nur kurze Zeit." 

worth mention that this rule is most directly con- 
firmed in the case of pictures,, where, as connoisseurs well 
know, the gi sates! masterpieces are not the first to attract 
attention. If they make a deep impression, it is not after 
one. but only after repealed. >us; but then they 

excite more and more admiration every time they are 
seen. 

Moreover, the chances that any given work will be 
quickly and rightly appreciated, depend upon two condi- 
tions: firstly, the character of the work, whether high 01 
low. in other words, easy or difficult to understand; and. 
secondly, the kind of public it attracts, whether large or 
small. This latter condition is, no doubt, in most instances 
a corollary of the former: but it also partly depends upon 
:er the work in question admits, like books and 
musical compositions, of being reproduced in great num- 
bers. By the coir; ::ion of these two conditions, 
achievements which serve no materially useful end — and 
these alone are under consideration here — will vary in re- 
gard to the chances they have of meeting with timely recog- 
nition and due appreciation; and the order of precedence, 
beginning with those who have the greatest chance, will 
be somewhat as follows: acrobats, circus-riders, ballet- 
dancers, jugglers, actors, singers, musicians, composers, 
a (both the last on account of the multiplication of 
their works), architects, painters, sculptors, philosophers. 

The last place of all is unquestionably taken by philoso- 
phers, because their works are meant not for entertainment 
but for instruction, and because they presume some knowl- 
edge on the part of the reader, and require him to make 
an effort of his own to understand them. This makes 
their public ex small and causes their fame to be 

poet and story-writer. His ''Herodes vor Bethlehem," is a parod; 
")f Kotzebue's •"Hussiten vor Naumburg," 



354 THE A RT OF LTTEEA TURE. 

more remarkable for its length than for its breadth. And, 
in general, it may be said that the possibility of a man's 
fame lasting a long time, stands in almost inverse ratio 
with the chance that it will be early in making its appear- 
ance; so that, as regards length of fame, the above order 
of precedence may be reversed. But, then, the poet and 
the composer will come in the end to stand on the same 
level as the philosopher; since, when once a work is com- 
mitted to writing, it is possible to preserve it to all time. 
However, the first place still belongs by right to the philoso- 
pher, because of the much greater scarcity of good work 
in this sphere, and the high importance of it; and also be- 
cause of the possibility it offers of an almost perfect trans- 
lation into any language. Sometimes, indeed it happens 
that a philosopher's fame outlives even his works them- 
selves; as has happened with T hales, Empedocles, Hera- 
clitus, Democitus, Parmenides, Epicurus, and many others. 

My remarks are, as I have said, confined to achievements 
that are not of any material use. Work that serves some 
practical end, or ministers directly to some pleasure of the 
senses; will never have any difficulty in being duly appre- 
ciated. No first-rate pastry-cook could long remain ob- 
scure in any town, to say nothing of having to appeal to 
posterity. 

Under fame of rapid growth is also to be reckoned fame 
of a false and artificial kind; where, for instance, a book 
is worked into a reputation by means of unjust praise, the 
help of friends, corrupt criticism, prompting from above 
and collusion from below. All this tells upon the multi- 
tude, which is rightly presumed to have no power of judg- 
ing for itself. This sort of fame is like a swimming- 
oladder; by its aid a heavy body may keep afloat. It 
bears up for a certain time, long or short according as the 
bladder is well sewed up and blown; but still the air comes 
out gradually, and the body sinks. This is the inevitable 
fate of ail works which are famous by reason of something 
outside of themselves. False praise dies away; collusion 
comes to an end; critics declare the reputation ungrounded; 
it vanishes, and is replaced by so much the greater con- 
tempt. Oontrarily, a genuine work, which, having the 
source of its fame in itself, can kindle admiration afresh in 
every age, resembles a body of low specific gravity, which 



ON BKPUTAIIOX 355 

always keeps up of its own accord, and so goes floating 
down the stream of time.* 

Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, 
philosophy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, 
keeping up single-handed a desperate struggle against the 
onslaught of an army of opponents. Is not this character 
istic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness, 
grossness, perversity, silliness and brutality of by far the 
greater part of the race, are always an obstacle to the 
efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; 
they so form that hostile army to which at last he has to 
succumb. Let the isolated champion achieve what he may: 
it is slow to be acknowledged; it is late in being appreci- 
ated, and then only on the score of authority; it may easily 
fail into neglect again, at any rate for awhile. Ever 
afresh it finds itself opposed by false, shallow, and insipid 
ideas, which are better suited to that large majority, and 
so generally hold the field. Though the critic may step 
forth and say, like Hamlet when he held up the two 
portraits to his wretched mother, -'-'Have you eyes? Have 
you eyes? v alas! they have none. When 1 watch the be- 
haviour of a crowd of people in the presence of some great 
master's work, and mark the manner of their applause, 
they often remind me of trained monkeys in a show T . The 
monkeys' gestures are, no doubt, much like those of men; 
but now r and again they betray that the real inward spirit 
of those gestures is not in them. Their irrational nature 
peeps out. 

It is often said of a man that " he is in advance of his 
age;" and it follows from the above remarks that this must 
be taken to mean that he is in advance of humanity in 
general. Just because of this fact, a genius makes no 
direct appeal except to those who are themselves consid- 
erably above the average in capacity; and these are toe 
rare to allow of their ever forming a numerous body at any 
one period. If he is in this respect not particularly fa- 

" : " Translator's note. — At this point Schopenhauer interrupts thi 
I'lread of his discourse to speak at length upon an example of false 
fame. Those who are at all acquainted with the philosopher's views 
will not be surprised to find that the writer thus held up to scorn is 
Hegel; and readers of the other volumes in this series will, with the 
translator, have had by now quite enough of the subject. The pas 
sage is therefore omitted- 



356 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

vored by fortune, be will be misunderstood by bis own 
age; in other words, he will remain unaccepted until time 
gradually brings together the voices of those few persons 
who are capable of judging a work of such high character. 
Then posterity will say: " This man was in advance of his 
age," instead of "in advance of humanity;" because hu- 
manity will be glad to lay the burden of its own faults 
upon a single epoch. 

Hence it a man has been superior to his own age, he 
would also have been superior to any other; provided that, 
in that age, by some rare and happy chance, a few just 
men, capable of judging in the sphere of his achievements, 
had been born at the same time with him; just as when, 
according to a beautiful Indian myth, Vishnu becomes 
incarnate as a hero, so, too, Brahma at the same time ap- 
pears as the singer of bis deeds; and hence Valmiki, Vyasa 
and Kalidasa are incarnations of Brahma. 

In this sense, then, it may be said that every 
immortal work puts its age to the proof, whether or 
no it will be able to recognize the merit of it. As a rule, 
the men of any age stand such a test no better than neigh- 
bors of Philemon and Baucis, who expelled the deities they 
failed to recognize. Accordingly, the right standard for 
judging the intellectual worth of any generation is sup- 
plied, not by the great minds that make their appearance 
in it — for their capacities are the work of Nature, and the 
possibility of cultivating them a matter of chance circum- 
stance — but by the way in which contemporaries receive 
their works; whether, I mean, they give their applause 
soon and with a will, or late and in niggardly fashion, or 
leave it to be bestowed altogether by posterity. 

This last fate will be specially reserved for worKs of a 
high character. For the happy chance mentioned above 
will be all the more certain not to come, in proportion as 
there are few to appreciate the kind of work done by great 
minds. Herein lies the immeasurable advantage possessed 
by poe^ls in respect of reputation; because their work is ac- 
cessible to almost every one. If it had been possible for Sir 
Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some 
hundred persons, perhaps in his lifetime any common 
scribbler would have been preferred to him; and afterward, 
when he had taken his proper place, it would also have 
Deen said in his honor that he was " in advance of his age." 



ON REPUTATION. 357 

Bat if envy, dishonesty and the pursuit of personal aims 
are added to the incapacity of those hundred persons who, 
in the name of their generation, are called upon to pass 
judgment on a work, then indeed it meets with the same 
sad fate as attends a suitor who pleads before a tribunal of 
judges one and all corrupt. 

In corroboration of this, we find, that the history of 
literature generally shows all those who made knowledge 
and insight their goal to have remained unrecognized and 
neglected, while those who paraded with the vain show of 
it received the admiration of their contemporaries, together 
with the emoluments. 

The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his get- 
ting the reputation that lie should be read. But by prac- 
ticing various arts, by the operation of chance, and by 
certain natural affinities, this reputation is quickly won by 
a hundred worthless people; while a worthy writer may 
come by it very slowly and tardily. The former possess 
friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous 
body which holds well together. The latter has nothing 
but enemies; because intellectual superiority is everywhere 
and under all circumstances the most hateful thing in the 
world, and especially to bunglers in the same line of work, 
who want to pass for something themselves.* • 

This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any 
great work — any work which is to outlive its own age, that 
a man pay no heed to his contemporaries, their views and 
opinions, and the praise or blame which they bestow. 
This condition is, however, fulfilled of itself when a man 
really does anything great, and it is fortunate that it is so. 
For if, in producing such a work, he were to look to the 
general opinion or the judgment of his colleagues, they 
would lead him astray at every step. Hence, if a man 
wants to go down to posterity, he must withdraw from the 
influence of his own age. This will, of course generally 
mean that he must also renounce any influence upon it, and 
be ready to buy centuries of fame by foregoing the ap- 
plause of his contemporaries. 

For when any new and wide-reaching truth comes into 

* If the professors of philosophy should chance to think that I 
am here hinting at them and the tactics they have for more than 
thirty years pursued toward my works, they have hit the nail upon 
the head. 



358 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

the world — and if it is new, it must be paradoxical — an 
obstinate stand will be made against it as long as possible; 
nay, people will continue to deny it even after they slacken 
their opposition and are almost convinced of its truth. 
Meanwhile it goes on quietly working its way, and, like an 
acid, undermining everything around it. From time to 
time a crash is heard; the old error comes tottering to the 
ground, and suddenly the new fabric of thought stands 
revealed, as though it were a monument just uncovered. 
Every one recognizes and admires it. To be sure, this all 
comes to pass for the most part very slowly. As a rule, 
people discover a man to be worth listening to only after 
he is gone; their " hear, hear!" resounds when the orator 
has left the platform. 

Works of the ordinary type meet with a better fate. 
Arising as they do in the course of, and in connection 
with, the general advance in contemporary culture, they 
are in close alliance with the spirit of their age — in other 
words, just those opinions which happen to be prevalent at 
the time. They aim at suiting the needs of the moment. 
If they have any merit, it is soon recognized; and they gain 
currency as books which reflect the latest ideas. Justice, 
nay, more than justice, is done to them. They afford 
little scope for envy; since, as was said above, a man will 
praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to imitate 
it himself. 

But those rare works which are destined to become the 
property of all mankind and to live for centuries, are, at 
their origin, too far in advance of the point at which 
culture happens to stand, and on that very account foreign 
to it and the spirit of their own time. They neither 
belong to it nor are they in any connection with it, and 
hence they excite no interest in those who are dominated 
by it. They belong to another, a higher stage of culture, 
and a time that is still far off. Their course is related to 
that of ordinary works as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit 
of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice done to 
them. People are at a loss how to treat them: so they 
leave them alone, and go their own snails" pace for them- 
selves. Does the worm see the eagle as it soars aloft? 

Of the number of books written in any language, about 
one in 100,000 forms a part of its real and permanent lit- 
erature. What a fate this one book has to et^«»*G before it 



ON REP VTA TION. 359 

outstrips, those 100,000 and gains its due place of honor! 
Such a book is the work of an extraordinary and eminent 
mind, and therefore it is specifically different from the 
others; a fact which sooner or later becomes manifest. 

Let no one fancy that things will ever improve in this 
respect. No! the miserable constitution of humanity 
never changes, though it may, to be sure, take somewhat 
varying forms with every generation. A distinguished 
mind seldom has its full effect in the lifetime of its posses- 
sor; because, at bottom, it is completely and properly un- 
derstood only by minds already akin to it. 

As it is a rare -thing for even one man out of many mil- 
lions to tread the path that leads to immortality, he must 
of necessity be very lonely. The journey to posterity lies 
through a horribly dreary region, like the Lybian desert 
of which, as is well known, no one has any idea who has 
not seen it himself. Meanwhile let me before all things 
recommend the traveler to take light baggage with him; 
otherwise he will have to throw away too much oix the 
road. Let him never forget the words of Balthazar Gracian; 
lo bueno, si breve, dos vezes bueno — good work is doubly 
good if it is short. This advice is specially applicable to 
my own countrymen. 

Compared with the short span of time they live, men of 
great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small 
plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen 
by anyone just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, 
can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. 
But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and 
wishes him back again. 

If the perishable son of time has produced an imperish- 
ble work, how short his own life seems compared with that 
of his child! He is like Semele or Maia — a mortal mother 
who gave birth to an immortal son; or, contrarily, like 
Achilles in regard to Thetis. What a contrast there is 
between what is fleeting and what is permanent! The 
short span of man's life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable 
existence, will seldom allow of his seeing even the begin- 
ning of his immortal child's brilliant career: nor will the 
father himself be taken for that which he really is. It 
may be said, indeed, that a man whose fame comes after 
him is the reverse of a nobleman, who is preceded by it. 

However, the only difference that it ultimately makes to a 



360 THE ART OF LITER A TUR E. 

man to receive his fame at the hands of contemporaries 
rather than from posterity is that in the former case his 
admirers are separated from him by space, and in the latter 
by time. For even in the case of contemporary fame, a 
man does not. hs a rule, see his admirers actually before 
him. Reverence cannot endure close proximity; it almost 
always dwells at some distance from its object; and in the 
presence of the person revered it melts like butter in the 
sun. Accordingly, if c. man is celebrated with his con- 
temporaries, nine- ten the of those among whom he lives 
will let their esteem be guided by his rank and fortune; 
and the remaining tenth may perhaps have -a dull conscious- 
ness of his high qualities, because they have heard about 
him from remote quarters. There is a fine Latin letter of 
Petrarch's on this incompatibility between reverence and 
the presence ol the person, and between fame and life. It 
comes second in his '* Epistolae familiares"* and it is 
addressed to Thomas Messanensis. He there observes, 
among other things, that the learned men of his age all 
made it a rule to think little of a man's writings if they 
had even once seen him. 

Since distance, then, is essential if a famous man is to be 
recognized and revered, it does not matter whether it is 
distance of space or of time It is true that he may some- 
times hear of his tame in the one case, but never in the 
other; but still, genuine and great merit may make up for 
this by confidently anticipating its posthumous fame. 
Nay, he who produces some really great thought is con- 
scious of his connection with coining generations at the 
very moment he conceives it; so that he feels the extension 
of his existence through centuries and thus lives with pos- 
terity as well as for it. And when, after enjoying a great 
man's work, we are seized with admiration for him, anu 
wish him back, so that we might see and speak with him, 
and have him in our possession, this desire of ours is not un- 
requited, for he, too, has had his longing for that posterity 
which will grant the recognition, honor, gratitude and love 
denied by envious contemporaries. 

If intellectual works of the highest order are not allowed 
their due until they come before the tribunal of posterity, 
a contrary fate is prepared for certain brilliant errors which 

* In the Venetian edition of 1492. 



ON REPUTATION. 361 

proceed from men of talent, and appear with an air of 
being well grounded. These errors are defended with so 
much acumen and learning that they actually become 
famous with their own age, and maintain their position at 
least during their author's lifetime. Of this sort are many 
false theories and wrong criticisms; also poems and works 
of art, which exhibit some false taste or mannerism favored 
by contemporary prejudice. They gain reputation and 
currency simply because no one is yet forthcoming who 
knows how to refute them or otherwise prove their falsity; 
and when he appears, as he usually does, in the next gener- 
ation, the glory of these works is brought to an end. Post- 
humous judges, be their decision favorable to the appel- 
lant or not, form the proper court for quashing the verdict 
of contemporaries. That is why it is so difficult and so 
rare to be victorious alike in both tribunals. 

The unfailing tendency of time to correct knowledge and 
judgment should always be kept in view as a means of 
allaying anxiety, whenever any grievous error appears, 
whether in art, or science, or practical life, and gains 
ground; or when some false and thoroughly perverse policy 
or movement is undertaken and receives applause at the 
hands of men. No one should be angry, or, still less, 
despondent; but simply imagine that the world has already 
abandoned the error in question, and now only requires 
time and experience to recognize of its own accord that 
which a clear vision detected at the first glance. 

When the facts themselves are eloquent of a truth, there 
is no need to rush to its aid with words: for time will give 
it a thousand tongues. How long it may be before they 
speak, will of course depend upon the difficulty of the sub- 
ject and the plausibility of the error; but come they will, 
and often it would be of no avail to try to anticipate them. 
In the worst cases it will happen with theories as it hap- 
pens with affairs in practical life; where sham and deception 
emboldened by success, advance to greater and greater 
lengths, until discovery is made almost inevitable. It is 
just so with theories; through the blind confidence of the 
blockheads who broach them, their absurdity reaches such 
a pitch that at last it is obvious even to the dullest eye. We 
may thus say to such people: " the wilder your statements 
the better/' 

There is also some comfort to be found in reflecting upon 



362 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

all the whims and crotchets which had their day and have 
now utterly vanished. In style, in grammar, in spelling, 
there are false notions of this sort which last only three or 
four years. But when the errors are on a large scale, while 
we lament the brevity of human life, we shall, in any case 
do well to lag behind our own age when we see it on a 
downward path. For there are two ways of not keeping on 
a level with the times. A man may be below it; or he may 
De above it. 



ON GENIUS. 



No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great 
as the gulf that separates the countless millions who use 
their head only in the service of their belly, in other words 
look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few 
and rare persons who have the courage to say: No it is 
too good for that; my head shall be active only in its own 
service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied 
spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form 
whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my 
character as an individual. These are the truly noble, the 
real noblesse of the world. The others are serfs and go 
with the soil — glebce adscripti. Of course, I am here re- 
ferring to those who have not only the courage, but also 
the call, and therefore the right, to order the head to quit 
the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacri- 
fice to have been worth the making. In the case of those 
to whom all this can only partially apply, the gulf is not so 
wide; but even though their talent be smull, so long as it 
is real, there will always be a sharp Hue of demarcation 
between them and the millions.* 



* The correct scale for adjusting the hierarchy of intelligences is 
furnished by the degree in which the mind takes merely individual 
or approaches universal views of things. The brute recognizes only 
the individual as such ; its comprehension does not extend beyond thi 
limits of the individual. But man reduces the individual to the gen- 
eral; herein lies the exercise of his reason; and the higher his intelli- 
gence reaches, the nearer do his general ideas approach the point at 
which they become universal. If his grasp of the universal is so 
deep as to be intuitive, and to apply not only to general ideas, but to 
tin individual object by itself, ther; there arises a knowledge cf 



ON GENIUS. 363 

The works of fine art, poetry and philosophy produced 
oy a nation are the outcome of the superfluous intellect ex- 
isting in it. 

For him who can understand aright — cum grano sails— 
the relation between the genius and the normal man may, 
perhaps, be best expressed as follows: A genius has a double 
intellect, one for himself and the service of his will; the 
other for the Avorld, of which he becomes the mirror, in 
■virtue of his purely objective attitude toward it. The 
work of art or poetry or philosophy produced by the genius 
is simply the result, or quintessence, of this contem- 
plative attitude, elaborated according to certain technical 
rules. 

The normal man, on the other hand, has only a single 
intellect, which may be called subjective by contrast with 
the objective intellect of genius. However acute this sub- 
jective intellect may be — and it exists in very various 
degrees of perfection — it is never on the same level with 
the double intellect of genius; just as the open chest notes 
of the human voice, however high, are essentially different 
from the falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves 
of the flute- and the harmonics of the violin, are produced 
by the column of air dividing itself into two vibrating 
halves, with a node between them: while the open chest 
notes of the human voice and the lower octave of the flute 
are produced by the undivided column of air vibrating as a 
whole. This illustration may help the reader to under- 
stand that specific peculiarity of genius which is unmis- 
takably stamped on the works, and even on the physiog- 
nomy, of him who is gifted with it. At the same time it 
is obvious that a double intellect like this must, as a rule, 
obstruct the service of the will; and this explains the poor 
capacity often shown by genius in the conduct of life. 
And what specially characterizes genius is that it has none 

tLe Ideas in the sense used by Plato. This knowledge is of an 
aesthetic character, when it is self-active, it rises to genius, and 
reaches the highest degree of intensity when it becomes philosophic; 
foi' then the whole of life and existence as it passes away, the world 
and all it contains, are grasped in their true nature by an act of in- 
tuition, and appear in a form which forces itself upon consciousness 
as an object of meditation. Here reflection attains its highest point. 
Between it and the merely animal perception there are countless 
stages, which differ according to the approach made to a universal 
view of things. 



364 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

of that sobriety of temper which is always to be found in 
the ordinary simple intellect, be it acute or dull. 

The brain may be likened to a parasite which is nour- 
ished as a part of the human frame without contributing 
directly to its inner economy; it is securely housed in the 
topmost story, and there leads a self-sufficient and inde- 
pendent life. In the same way it may be said that a man 
endowed with great mental gifts leads, apart from the indi- 
vidual life common to all, a second life, purely of the 
intellect. He devotes himself to the constant increase, 
rectification and extension, not of mere learning, but of 
real systematic knowledge and insight; and remains un- 
touched by the fate that overtakes him personally, so long 
as it does not disturb him in his work. It is thus a life 
which raises a man and sets him above fate and its changes. 
Always thinking, learning, experimenting, practicing his 
knowledge, the man soon comes to look upon this second 
life as the chief mode Of existence, and his merely personal 
life as something subordinate, serving only to advance 
ends higher than itself. 

An example of this independent, separate existence is 
furnished by Goethe. During the war in the Champagne, 
and amid all the bustle of the camp, he made observations 
for his theory of color; and as soon as the numberless 
calamities of that war allowed of his retiring for a short 
time to the fortress of Luxembourg, he took up the manu- 
script of his " Farbenlehre." This is an example which we, 
the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never let- 
ting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual 
life, however much the storm of the world may invade and 
agitate our personal environment; always remembering that 
we are the sons, not of the bondwoman, but of the free. 
As our emblem and coat of arms, I propose a tree mightily 
shaken by the wind, but still bearing its ruddy fruit oa 
every branch; with the motto Bum convellor mUescunt t 
or Conquassata sed ferax. 

That purely intellectual life of the individual has its 
counterpart in humanity as a whole. For there, too, the 
real life is the life of the will, both in the empirical and in 
the transcendental meaning of the word. The purely in- 
tellectual life of humanity lies in its effort to increase 
knowledge by means of the sciences, and its desire to per- 
fect the arts. Both science and art thus advance slowly 



ON GENIUS. . 3C5 

from one generation to another, and grow with the cen- 
turies, every race as it hurries by furnishing its contribu- 
tion. This intellectual life, like some gift from heaven, 
hovers over the stir and movement of the world; or it is, 
as it were, a sweet-scented air developed out of the ferment 
itself — the real life of mankind, dominated by will; and 
side by side with the history of nations, the history of phi- 
losophy, science and art takes its innocent and bloodless 
way. 

The difference between the genius and the ordinary man 
is, no dcubt, a quantitative one, in so far as it is a diffei- 
ence of degree; but I am tempted to regard it also as qual- 
itative, in view of the fact that ordinary minds, notwith- 
standing individual variation, have a certain tendency to 
think alike. Thus on similar occasions their thoughts at 
once all take a similar direction, and run on the same lines; 
and this explains why their judgments constantly agree — 
not, however, because they are based on truth. To such 
lengths does this go that certain fundamental views obtain 
among mankind at all times, and are always being re- 
peated and brought forward anew, while the great minds 
of all ages are in open or secret opposition to them. 

A genius is a man in whose mind the world is presented 
as an object is presented in a mirror, but with a degree 
more of clearness and a greater distinction of outline than 
is attained by ordinary people. It is from him that human- 
ity may look for most instruction; for the deepest insight 
into the most important matters is to be acquired, not by 
an observant attention to detail, but by a close study of 
things as a whole. And if his mind reaches maturity, the 
instruction he gives will be conveyed now in one form, 
now in another. Thus genius may be defined as an emi- 
nently clear consciousness of things in general, and there- 
fore, also of that which is opposed to them, namely, one's 
own self. 

The world looks up to a man thus endowed, and expects 
to learn something about life and its real nature. But sev- 
eral highly favorable circumstances must combine to pro- 
duce genius, and this is a very rare event. It happens only 
now and then, let us say once in a century, that a man is 
born whose intellect so perceptibly surpasses the norma' 
measure as to amount to that second faculty which seems 
to be accidental, as it is out of all relation to the will. He 



366 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 

may remaiu a long time without being recognized or ap* 
predated, stupidity preventing the one and envy the other. 
But should this once come to pass, mankind will crowd 
round him and his works, in the hope that he may be able 
to enlighten some of the darkness of their existence or in- 
form them about it. His message is, to some extent, a 
revelation, and he himself a higher being, even though he 
may be but little above the ordinary standard. 

Like the ordinary man, the genius is what he is chiefly 
for himself. This is essential to his nature, a fact which 
can neither be avoided nor altered. What he may be for 
others remains a matter of chance and secondary impor- 
tance. In no case can people receive from his mind more 
than a reflection, and then only when he joins with them 
in the attempt to get his thought into their heads; where, 
however, it is never anything but an exotic plant, stunted 
and frail. 

In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps eveu 
immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange one's self sc 
fully from the world of things for a few moments, that the 
most ordinary objects and events appear quite new and un- 
familiar. In this way their true nature is disclosed. What 
is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be difficult: 
it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of 
genius. 

By itself, genius can produce original thoughts just as 
little as a woman by herself can bear children. Outward 
circumstances must come to fructify genius, and be, as it 
were, a father to its progeny. 

The mind of genius is among other minds what the car- 
buncle is among precious stones: it sends forth light of its 
own, while the others reflect only that which they have 
received. The relation of the genius to the ordinary mind 
may also be described as that of an idio- electrical body 
to one which merely is a conductor of electricity. 

The mere man of learning, who spends his life in teach- 
ing what he has learned, is not strictly to be called a man 
of genius; just as idio-electrical bodies are not conductors. 
Nay, genius stands to mere learning as the words to the 
music in a song. A man of learning is a man who has 
learned a great deal; a man of genius, one from whom we 
learn something which the genius has learned from no 



ON GENIUS. 36 1 } 

body. Great minds, of wnich there is scarcely one in a 
hundred millions, are thus the lighthouses of humanity; 
and without them mankind would lose itself in the bound- 
less sea of monstrous error and bewilderment. 

And so the simple man of learning; in the strict sense of 
the word — the ordinary professor, for instance — looks 
upon the genius much as we look upon a hare, which is 
good to eat after it has been killed and dressed up. So 
Vong as it is alive, it is only good to shoot at. 

He who wishes to experience gratitude from his contem- 
poraries, must adjust his pace to theirs. But great things are 
never produced in this way. And he who wants to do 
great things must direct his gaze to posterity, and in firm 
confidence elaborate his work for coming generations. 
No doubt, the result may be that he will quite remain quite 
unknown to his contemporaries, and comparable to a man 
who, compelled to spend his life upon" a lonely island, with 
great effort sets up a monument there, to transmit to fu- 
ture seafarers the knowledge of his existence. If he thinks 
it a hard fate, let him console himself with the reflection 
that the ordinary man who lives for practical aims only, 
often suffers a like fate, without having any compensation 
to hope for; inasmuch as he may, under favorable conditions, 
spend a life of material production, earning, buying, build- 
ing fertilizing, laying out, founding, establishing, beautify- 
ing, with daily effort and unflagging zeal, and all the timo 
think that he is working for himself; and yet in the end 
"It is his descendants who reap the benefit of it all, and 
sometimes not even his descendants. It is the same with 
the man of genius; he, too hopes for his reward and for 
honor at least; and at last finds that he has worked for 
posterity alone. Both, to be sure, have inherited a great 
deal from their ancestors. 

The compensation I have mentioned as the privilege of 
genius lies, not in what it is to others, but in what it is to 
itself. What man has in any real sense lived more than he 
whose moments of thought make their echoes heard 
through the tumult of centuries? Perhaps, after all, it 
would be the best thing for a genius to attain undisturbed 
possession of himself, by spending his life in enjoying the 
pleasure of his own thoughts, his own works, and bjf 
admitting the world only as the heir of his ample existence. 



B68 WE ART OF LITERATURE. 

Then the world would find the mark of his existence only 
after his death, like the marks in the Ichnolith.* 

Nor is it only in the activity of his highest powers that 
the genius surpasses ordinary people. A man who is 
unusually well-knit, supple and agile, will perform all his 
movements with exceptional ease, even with comfort, 
because he takes a direct pleasure in an activity for which 
he is particularly well-equipped, and therefore often exer- 
cises it without any object. Further, if he is an acrobat 
or a dancer, not only does he take leaps which other people 
cannot execute, but he also betrays rare elasticity and 
agility in those easier steps which others can also perform, 
and even in ordinary walking. In the same way a man of 
superior mind will not only produce thoughts and works 
which could never have come from another; it will not be 
here alone that he will show his greatness; but as knowl- 
3dge and thought form a mode of activity natural and easy 
to him, he will also delight himself in them at all times, 
and so apprehend small matters which are within the 
range of other minds, more easily, quickly and correctly 
than they. Thus he will take a direct and lively pleasure 
in every increase of knowledge, every problem solved, 
every witty thought, whether of his own or another's; and 
so his mind will have no further aim than to be constantly 
active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of delight; 
and boredom, that specter which haunts the ordinary man, 
can never come near him. 

Then, too, the masterpieces of past and contemporary 
men of genius exist in their fullness for him alone. If a 
great product of genius is recommended to the ordinary, 
simple mind, it will take as much pleasure in it as the 
victim of gout receives in being invited to a ball. The 
one goes for the sake of formality, and the other reads the 
book so as not to be in arrear. For La Bruyere was quite 
right when he said: "All the wit in the world is lost upon 
him who has none." The whole range of thought of a 
man of talent, or of a genius, compared with the thoughts 
of the common man, is, even when directed to objects 
essentially the same, like a brilliant oil-painting, full of 

* Translator's Note. — For an illustration of this feeling in poetry t 
Schopenhauer refers the reader to Byron's " Prophecy of Dante;* 
introd. to C. 4. 



ON GENIUS. 369 

life, compared with a mere outline or a weak sketch in 
water-color. 

All this is part of the reward of genius, and compensates 
him for a lonely existence in a world with which he has 
nothing in common and no sympathies. But since size is 
relative, it comes to the same thing whether I say, Caius 
was a great man, or Caius has to live among wretchedly 
small people; for Brobdingnag and Lilliput vary only in 
the point from which they start. However great, then, 
however admirable and instructive, a long posterity may 
think the author of immortal works, during his lifetime lie 
will appear to his contemporaries small, wretched, and 
insipid in proportion. This is what I mean by saying that 
as there are three hundred degrees from the base of a tower 
to the summit, so there are exactly three hundred from the 
summit to the base. Great minds thus owe little ones 
some indulgence; for it is only in virtue of these little 
minds that they themselves are great. 

Let us, then, not be surprised if we find men of genius 
generally unsociable and repellent. It is not their waut of 
sociability that is to blame. Their path through the 
world is like that of a man who goes for a walk on a bright 
summer morning. He gazes with delight on the beauty 
and freshness of nature, but he has to rely wholly on that 
for entertainment; for he can find no society but the peas- 
ants as they bend over the earth and cultivate the soil. It 
is often the case that a great mind prefers soliloquy to the 
dialogue he may have in this world. If he condescends to 
it now and then, the hollowness of it may possibly drive 
him back to his soliloquy; for in forgetfulness of his inter- 
locutor, or caring little whether he understands or not, he 
talks to him as a child talks to a doll. 

Modesty in a great mind would, no doubt, "be pleasing to 
the world; but, unluckily, it is a contradictio in adjecto. It 
would compel a genius to give the thoughts and opinions, 
nay, even the method and style, of the million preference 
over his own; to set a higher value upon them; and, wide 
apart as they are, to bring his views into harmony with 
theirs, or even suppress them altogether, so as to let the 
others hold the field. In that case, however, he would 
either produce nothing at all, or else his achievements 
would be just upon a level with theirs. Great, genuine 
and extraordinary work can be done only in so far 



3 70 TIT ft ART OF L TTERA 7 (IRE. 

as its author disregards the method, the thoughts, the 
opinions of his contemporaries, itnd quietly works on, in 
*pite of their criticism, on his side despising what they 
praise. No one becomes great without arrogance of this 
sort. Should his life and work fall upon a time which 
cannot recognize and appreciate him, he is at any rate true 
to himself; like some noble traveler forced to pass the nigh; 
in a miserable inn; when morning comes, he contentedly 
goes his way. 

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with 
his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed 
in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted 
him allows of his following his vocation without having to 
think about other people. 

For the brain to be a mere laborer in the service of the 
belly, is indeed the common lot of almost all those who do 
not live on the work of their hands; and they are far from 
being discontented with their lot. But it strikes despair 
into a man of great mind, whose brain-power goes beyond 
the measure necessary for the service of the will; and he 
prefers, if need be, to live in the narrowest circumstances, 
so long as they afford him the free use of his time for the 
development and application of his faculties; in other 
words, if they give him che leisure which is invaluable to 
him. It is otherwise with ordinary people; for them leisure 
has no value in itself, nor is it, indeed, without its dangers, 
as these people seem to know. The technical work of our 
time, which is done to an unprecedented perfection, has, 
by increasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the 
favorites of fortune a choice between more leisure and cul- 
ture upon one side, and additional luxury and good living, 
but with increased activity, upon the other; and, true to 
their character, they choose the latter, and prefer cham- 
pagne to freedom. And they are consistent in their 
choice; for, to them, every exertion of the mind which 
does not serve the aims of the will is folly. Intellectual 
effort foi its own sake, they call eccentricity. Therefore, 
persistence in the aims of the will and the belly will be 
concentricity; and, to be sure, the will is the center, the 
kernel of the world. 

But in general it is very seldom that any such alterna- 
tive is presented. For as with money, most men have no 
superfluity, but only just enough for their needs, so with 



OS GENIUS. 3ti 

intelligence; they possess just what will suffice for the 
service of the will, that is, for the carrying on of theii 
business. Having made their fortune, they are content to 
gape or to indulge in sensual pleasures or childish amuse- 
ments, cards or dice; or they will talk in the dullest way, 
or dress up and make obeisance to one another. And ho\r 
few are those who have even a little superfluity of intellect 
u al power! Like the others they too make themselves a 
pleasure; but it is a pleasure of the intellect. Either they 
will pursue some liberal study which brings them in noth- 
ing, or they will practice some art; and, in general, 
they will be capable of taking an objective interest in 
things, so that it will be possible to converse with them. 
But with the others it is better not to enter into any rela- 
tions at all; for, except when they tell the results of their 
own experience or give an account of their special vocation, 
or at any rate impart what they have learned from some- 
one else, their conversation will not be worth listening to; 
and if anything is said to them, they will rarely grasp 01 
understand it aright, and it will in most cases be opposed 
to their own opinions. Balthazar Gracian describes them 
very strikingly as men who are not men — Itombres cite non 
Jo son. And Giordano Bruno says the same thing: " What 
it difference there is in having to do with men compared 
with those who are only made in their image and like- 
ness! * And how wonderfully this passage agrees with that- 
remark in the Kurral: The common people look like mer,- 
but I have never seen anything quite like them." If the 
reader will consider the extent to which these ideas agree 
in thought and even in expression, and the wide difference 
between them in point of date and nationality, he cannot 
doubt but that they are at one with the facts of life. It 
was certainly not under the influence of those passages 
that, about twenty years ago, I tried to get a snuff-bcT 
made the lid of which should have two fine chestnuts rep- 
resented upon it, if possible in mosaic; together with a 
leaf which was to show that they were horse-chestnuts. 
This symbol was meant to keep the thought constantly be- 
fore my mind. If any one wishes for entertainment, such 
as will prevent him feeling solitary even when he is alone, 
let me recommend the company of dogs, whose moral and 

* Opera: ed. Warner, I. 224. 



372 THE ART GF LITERATURE?. 

intellectual qualities may almost always afford delight and 
gratification. 

Still, we should always be careful to avoid being unjust. 
I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again 
by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experi- 
ences with mankind. Countless times, in indignation at 
their incapacity, their total lack of discernment, their 
bestiality, I have been forced to echo the old complaint 
that folly is the mother and Khe nurse of the human 
race: 

" Huniani generis mater nutrixque profecto 
Stultitia est." 

But at other times I have been astounded that from such a 
race there could have gone forth so many arts and sciences, 
abounding in so much use and beauty, even though it has 
always been the few that produce tliem. Yet these arts 
and sciences have struck root, established and perfected 
themselves; and the race has with persistent fidelity pre- 
served Homer, Plato, Horace and others for thousands of 
years, by copying and treasuring their writings, thus sav- 
ing them from oblivion, in spite of all the evils and 
atrocities that have happened in the world. Thus the 
race has proved that it appreciates the value of these things, 
arid at the same time it can form a correct view of special 
achievements or estimate signs of judgment and intelli- 
gence. When this takes place among those who belong 
to the great multitude, it is by a kind of inspiration. 
Sometimes a correct opinion will be formed by the multi- 
tude itself; but this is only when the chorus of praise has 
grown full and complete. It is then like the sound of un- 
trained voices; where there are enough of them, it is 
always harmonious. 

Those who emerge from the multitude, those who are 
called men of genius, are merely the lucida intervalla of 
the whole human race. They achieve that which others 
could not possibly achieve. Their originality is so great 
that not only is their divergence from others obvious, but 
their individuality is expressed with such force, that all 
the men of genius who have ever existed show, every one of 
them, peculiarities of character and mind; so that the 
gift of his works is one which he alone of all men could 
ever have presented to the world. This is what maken 



ON GENIUS. 373 

that simile of Ariosto's so true and so justly celebrated: 
Naiura lofece e poi ruppe lo stampo. After Nature stamps 
41 man of genius, she breaks the die. 

But there is always a limit to human capacity; and no 
one can be a great genius without having some decidedly 
weak side, it may even be some intellectual narrowness. 
fn other words, there will be some faculty in which he is 
now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments. 
It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an 
obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. 
What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define 
with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better 
expressed indirectly; thus Plato's weak point is exactly 
that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa; ar^d so, 
too, Kant is deficient just where Goethe is great. 

Now, mankind is fond of venerating something; but its 
veneration is generally directed to the wrong object, and it 
remains so directed until posterity comes to set it right. 
But the educated public is no sooner set right in this, than 
the honor which is due to genius degenerates; just as the 
honor which the faithful pay to their saints easily passeo 
into a frivolous worship of relics. Thousands of Christians 
adore the relics of a saint whose life and doctrine are un- 
known to them; and the religion of thousands of Buddhists 
lies more in veneration of the Holy Tooth or some such 
object, or the vessel that contains it, or the Holy Bowl, 
or the fossil foosteps, or the Holy Tree which Buddha 
planted, than in the thorough knowledge and faithful 
practice of his high teaching. Petrarch's house in Arqua; 
Tasso's supposed prison in Ferrara; Shakespeare's house in 
Stratford, with his chair; Goethe's house in Weimar, with 
its furniture; Kant's old hat; the autographs of great 
men; these things are gaped at with interest and awe by 
many who have never read their works. They cannot do 
anything more than just gape. 

The intelligent among them are moved by the wish to 
see the objects which the great man habitually had before 
his eyes; and by a strange illusion, these produce the mis- 
taken notion that with the objects they are bringing back 
the man himself, or that something of him must cling to 
them. Akin to such people are those who earnestly strive 
to acquaint themselves with the subject matter of a poet's 
works, or to unravel the personal circumstances and events 



3T4 THE A Rl OF LITER A TUUE 

in his life which have suggested particular passages. This 
is as though the audience in a theater were to admire a fine 
scene, and then rush upon the stage to look at the scaffold- 
ing that supports it. There are in our day enough instances 
of these critical investigators, and they prove the truth of 
the saying that mankind is interested, not in the form of a 
work, that is, in its manner of treatment, but in its actual 
matter. All it cares for is the theme. To read a philoso- 
pher's biography,, instead of studying his thoughts, is like 
neglecting a picture and attending only to the style of its 
frame, debating whether it is carved well or ill, and how 
much it cost to gild it. 

This is all very well. However, there is another class cf 
persons whose interest is also directed to material and per- 
sonal considerations, but they go much further and carry 
it to a point where it becomes absolutely futile. Because 
a great man has opened up to them the treasures of his in- 
most being, and. by a supreme effort of his faculties, pro- 
duced works which not only redound to their elevation and 
enlightenment, but will also benefit their posterity to the 
tenth and twentieth generation; because he has presented 
mankind with a matchless gift, these varlets think them- 
selves justified in sitting in judgment upon his personal 
morality, and trying if they cannot discover here or there 
some spot in him which will soothe the pain they feel at the 
sight of so great a mind, compared with the overwhelming 
feeling of their own nothingness. 

This is the real source of all those prolix discussions, 
carried on in countless books and reviews, on the moral as- 
pect of Goethe's life and whether he ought not to have 
married one or other of the girls with whom he fell in love 
in his young days; whether, again, instead of honestly de- 
voting himself to the service of his master, he should not 
have been a man of the people, a German patriot, worthy 
of a seat in the Paulskirche, and so on. Such crying in- 
gratitude and malicious detraction prove that these self- 
constituted judges are as great knaves morally as they are 
intellectually, which is saying a great deal. 

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; 
but the spring that moves genius to the production of its 
works is not so easy to name. Wealth is seldom its re- 
ward. Xor is it reputation or glory; only a Frenchman 
could mean that. Glory if «uch an uncertain thing, and, 



ON GENIUS. 375 

if you look at it closely, of so little value. Besides it never 
corresponds to the effort you have made: 

" Responsura tuo nunquam est par fauna labori." 

Nor, again, is it exactly the pleasure it gives yon; for this 
is almost outweighed by the greatness of the effort. It is 
rather a peculiar kind of instinct, which drives the man of 
genius to give permanent form to what he sees and feeis, 
without being conscious of any further motive. It works, 
in the main, by a necessity similar to that which makes a 
tree bear its fruit; and no external condition is needed but 
the ground upon which it is to thrive. 

On a closer examination, it seems as though, in the case 
of a genius, the will to live, which is the spirit of the hu- 
man species, were conscious of having by some rare chance, 
and for a brief period, attained a greater clearness of vi- 
sion, and were now trying to secure it, or at least the out- 
come of it, for the whole species, to which the individual 
genius in his inmost being belongs; so that the light which 
he sheds about him may pierce the darkness and dullness of 
ordinary human consciousness and there produce some 
good effect. 

Arising in some such way, this instinct drives the genius 
to carry his work to completion, without thinking of re- 
ward or applause or sympathy; to leave all care for his 
own personal welfare; to make his life one of industrious 
solitude^ and to strain his faculties to the utmost. He 
thus comes to think more about posterity than about con- 
temporaries; because, while the latter can only lead him 
astray, posterity forms the majority of the species, and 
time will gradually bring the discerning few who can ap- 
preciate him. Meanwhile it is with him as with the artist 
described by Goethe; he has no princely patron to prize his 
talents, no friend to rejoice with him: 

"Ein Furst der die Talente schatzt, 
Ein Freund der sicli mit mir ergotzt, 
Die haben leider mir gefehlt." 

His work is, as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit 
of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a more dis- 
cerning posterity will be to make it the property of man- 
kind. An aim like this far surpasses all others, and for it 
lie wears the crown of thorns which is one day to bloom 



376 THE ART OF LITERA TUBE. 

into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are concentrated 
in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as the 
insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole 
strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it 
puts its eggB in some place of safety, where, as it well 
knows, the young will one day find life and nourishment 
and then dies in confidence. 



STUDIES IN PESSIMISM 



NOTE. 

"Jhe essays here presented form a further selection from 
Schopenhauer's "Parerga," brought together under a title 
which is not to be found in the original, and does not 
claim to apply to every chapter in the volume. The first 
essay is, in the main, a rendering of the philosophers re- 
marks under the heading of " Nachtrage zur Lehre vom 
Leiden der Welt," together with certain parts of another 
seGtion entitled " Nachtrage zur Lehre von der Bejahung 
n nd Verneinung des Willens ziun Leben." Such omissions 
as I have made are directed chiefly by the desire to avoid 
repeating arguments already familiar to the readers of the 
other volumes in this series. The " Dialogue on Immor- 
tality " sums up views expressed at length in the philoso- 
pher's chief work, and treated again in the " Parerga." The 
psychological observations in this and the previous volume 
practically exhaust the chapter of the original which bears 
this title. 

The essay on ' ' Women " must not be taken in jest. It ex- 
presses Schopenhauer's serious convictions; and, as a pene- 
trating observer of the faults of humanity, he may be 
allowed a hearing on a question which is just now receiving 
a good deal of attention among us. 

T. B. S. 



STUDIES IN PESSIMISM, 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of 
life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is ab- 
surd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that 
abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs 
and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no 
purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each sepa- 
ate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be some- 
thing exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule. 

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by 
most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative 
in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes 
its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned 
to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his 
position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.* It is 
the good which is negative: in other words, happiness and 
satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state 
of pain brought to an end. 

This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to 
be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very 
much more painful. 

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs 
the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between 
the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this 

Translator's Note cf Y/teod; §153 Leibnitz argued that evil is a neg- 
ative quality — i.e., the absence of good: and that its active and seem- 
ingly positive character is an incidental and not an essential part of 
its nature. Cold, he said, is only the absence of the power of heat, 
*nd the active power of expansion in freezing water is an incidental 
and not an essential part of the nature of cold. The fact is, that the 
power of expansion in freezing water is really an increase of repul- 
sion among its molecules; and Schopenhauer is quite right in calling 
the whole argument a sophism. 



3£2 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings 
of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the 
other. 

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any 
kind will be thought of other people who are in a still 
worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consola- 
tion open to every one. But what an awful fate this 
means for mankind as a whole! 

We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under 
the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then 
another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are 
all unconscious of the evil fate may have presently in store 
for us — sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or 
reason. 

No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, 
that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us 
take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster 
witli a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is 
only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom. 

But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame 
would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were 
removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, 
hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand 
were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance 
that, though they might not burst, they would present the 
spectacle of unbridled folly — nay, they would go mad. And 
I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain 
or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship 
without ballast is unstable and will not go straight. 

Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form 
the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all 
wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men 
occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? 
If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land 
flowing with milk and hone}, where every Jack obtained 
his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would 
either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would 
be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end man- 
kind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now 
to accept at the hands of Nature. 

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we 
are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, 
sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 333 

play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what 
is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are 
times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, 
condemned not to death, but to life, and as yet all uncon- 
scious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every 
man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state 
of life of which it may be said: " It is bad to-day, and 
it will be worse to-morrow and so on till the worst of 
all." 

If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an 
amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun 
shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be 
much better if on the earth as little as on the moon the 
sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and 
if, here as there the surface were still in a crystalline 
state. 

Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable epi- 
sode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence. And, 
in any case, even though things have gone with you toler- 
ably well, the longer you live the more clearly you will 
feel that, on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a 
cheat. 

If two men who were friends in their youth meet again 
when they are old, after being separated for a lifetime, 
the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other 
will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; 
because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier 
time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before 
them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and 
then performed so little. This feeling will so completely 
predominate over every other that they will not even con- 
sider it necessary to give it words; but on either side it will, 
be silently assumed, and form the ground-work of all they 
have to talk about. 

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man 
who sits some time in the conjurer s booth at a fair, and 
witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. 
The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they 
are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is 
gone. 

While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are- 
countless numbers whose fate is to be deplored. 

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say de~ 
fuActus est; it means that the man has done his task. 



384 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

If children were brought into the world by an act of 
pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? 
Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the 
coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? 
or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that bur- 
den upon it in cold blood. 

I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is com- 
fortless — because I speak the truth; and people prefer to 
be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. 
Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace. 
At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines 
to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those 
rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them 
for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your 
University professors are bound to preach optimism; and 
it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories. 

I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, 
every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; 
that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is 
the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore, 
that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not 
by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has 
been free from suffering — from positive evil. If this is the 
true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a hap- 
pier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a lit- 
tle more closely. 

However varied the forms that human happiness and 
misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and 
shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily 
pleasure or bodily pain. This basis is very restricted: 
it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold; 
the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the ab- 
sence of these things. Consequently, as far as real phys- 
ical pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than 
the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his 
nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of 
pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind 
of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much 
stronger are the passions aroused in him! what an immeas- 
urable difference there is in the depth and vehemence of 
his emotions! — and yet, in the one case, as in the other, all 
to produce the same result in the end: namely, health, 
food, clothing:, and so on, 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 385 

The chief source of all this passion is that thought for 
tfhat is absent and future, which, with man, exercises sueh 
a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that is 
the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears — emotions 
which affect him more deeply than could ever be the case 
with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute 
is confined. In his powers of reflection, memory and fore- 
sight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing 
and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But the 
brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is 
as though it were suffering for the first time, even though 
the same thing should have previously happened to it times 
out of number. It has no power of summing up its feel- 
ings. Hence its careless and placid temper, how much it 
is to be envied. But in man reflection comes in, with all 
the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the 
same elements of pleasure and pain which are common to 
him and the brute, it develops his susceptibility to happi- 
ness and misery to such a degree that, at one moment the 
man is brought in an instant to a state of delight that may 
even prove fatal, at another to the depths of despair and 
suicide. 

If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that, 
in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally 
added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in 
their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy 
than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; 
delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous 
liquors, fine clothes and the thousand and one things that 
he considers necessary to his existence. 

And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and 
peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain, 
which man has established for himself, also as the result of 
using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out 
of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all 
his other interests put together— I mean ambition and the 
feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he 
thinks about the opinion other people have of him. Tak- 
ing a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes 
the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are net 
rooted in physical pleasure or pain. It is true that besides 
the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the 
brute, man has the nleasures of the mind as well. These 



386 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling 
or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achieve- 
ments; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set 
against them on the side of suffering. Boredom is a form 
of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural 
state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint 
traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the 
:;ase of man it has become a downright scourge. The 
crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to till 
their purses but never to put anything into their heads, 
offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. Their 
wealth becomes a punishment by deliveiing them up to the 
misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will 
rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and 
everywhere. No sooner do they arrive in a place than they 
are anxious to know what amusements it affords: just as 
though they were beggars asking where they could receive 
a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of 
human life. Finally, I may mention that as regards the 
sexual relation, man is committed to a peculiar arrange- 
ment which drives him obstinately to choose one person. 
This feeling grows, now and then, into a more or less pas- 
sionate love, * which is the source of little pleasure and 
much suffering. 

It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition 
of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty 
structure of human happiness and misery, resting, too, on 
the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in 
common with the brute, and exposing him to such violent 
emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convul- 
sion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written 
and may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when 
all is told, he has been struggling ultimately for the very 
same things as the brute has attained, and with an incom- 
parably smaller expenditure of passion and pain. 

But all this contributes to increase the measure of suf- 
fering in human life out of all proportion to its pleasures; 
and the pains of life are made much worse for man by the 
fact that death is something very real to him. The brute 
flies from death instinctively without really knowing what 

* I have treated this subject at length in a special chapter of the 
second volume of my cliief work 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 3S? 

it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it in the 
way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before 
his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural 
death, and most of them live only just long enough to 
transmit their species, and then, if not earlier, become the 
prey of some other animal — while man, on the other hand, 
manages to make so-called natural death the rule, to 
which, however, there are a good many exceptions — the 
advantage is on the side of the brute, for the reason stated 
above. But the fact is that man attains the natural term 
of years just as seldom as the brute; because the unnatural 
way in which he lives, and the strain of work and emotion, 
lead to a degeneration of the race; and so his goal is not 
often reached. 

The brute is much more content with mere existence 
than man; the plant is wholly so; and man finds satisfac- 
tion in it just in proportion as he is dull and obtuse. Ac- 
cordingly, the life of the brute carries less of sorrow with 
it, but also le3s of joy, when compared with the life of man; 
and while this may be traced, on the one side, to freedom 
from tiie torment of care and anxiety, it is also due to the 
fact that hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. 
It is thus deprived of any share in that which gives us the 
most and the best of our joys and pleasures, the mental 
anticipation of a happy future, and the inspiriting play of 
fantasy, both of which we owe to our power of imagina- 
tion. If the brute is free from care, it is also, in this 
sense, without hope; in either case because its conscious- 
ness is limited to the present moment, to what it can 
'actually see before it. The brute is an embodiment of 
present impulses, and hence what elements of fear and 
hope exist in its nature— an^ f hey do not go very far — 
arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and with- 
in reach of those impulses: whereas a man's range of 
vision embraces the whole of his life, and extends far into 
the past and the future. 

Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes 
show real wisdom when compared with us — I mean, their 
quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. The 
tranquillity of mind which this seems to give them often 
puts us to shame for the many times we allow our thoughts 
and our cares to njake us restless and discontented. And, 
in fact, those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I 



388 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

have been mentioning are not to be had for nothing. Tne 
delight which a man has in hoping for and looking for- 
ward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleas- 
nre attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is after- 
ward deducted; for the more we look forward to anything, 
the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the 
brute's enjoyment is not anticipated and therefore suffers 
no deduction; so that the actual pleasure of the moment 
comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the same way, too, 
evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic 
weight: whereas with us the fear of its coming often 
makes its burden ten times more grievous. 

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives 
itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes 
so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. 
They are the present moment personified, and in some re- 
spects they make us feel the value of every hour that is 
free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our 
thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. But man, 
that selfish and heartless creature, misuses this quality of 
the brute to be more content than we are with mere exist- 
ence, and often works it to such an extent that he allows 
the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life. 
The bird which was made so that it might rove over half 
the world, he shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there 
to die a slow death in longing and crying for freedom; for 
in a cage it does not sing for the pleasure of it. And when 
I see how man misuses the dog, his best friend; how he 
ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel the 
deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation" 
against its master. 

We shall see later that by taking a very high standpoint 
it is possible to justify the sufferings of mankind. But 
this justification cannot apply to animals, whose sufferings, 
while in a great measure brought about by men, are often 
considerable even apart from their agency.* And so we 
are forced to ask, Why and for what purpose does all this 
torment and agony exist? There is nothing here to give 
the will pause; it is not free to deny itself and so obtain 
redemption. There is only one consideration that may 
serve to explain the sufferings of animals. It is this: that 

* Cf. "Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. ii. p 404. 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 380 

the will to live, which underlies the whole world of phe 
nomena, must in their case satisfy its cravings by feeding 
upon itself. This it does by forming a gradation of phe- 
nomena, every one of which exists at the expense of another 
I have shown, however, that the capacity for suffering i\ 
less in animals than in man. Any further explanation 
that may be given of their fate will be in the nature ol 
hypothesis, if not actually mythical in its character; and 
I may leave the reader to speculate upon the matter for 
himself. 

Brahma is said to have produced the world by a kind of 
fall or mistake; and in order to atone for his folly, he is 
bound to remain in it himself until he works out his re- 
demption. As an account of the origin of things, that is 
admirable! According to the doctrines of Buddhism, the 
world came into being as the result of some inexplicable 
disturbance in the heavenly calm of Nirvana, that blessed 
state obtained by expiation, which had endured so long a 
time — the change taking place by a kind of fatality. This 
explanation must be understood as having at bottom some 
moral bearing; although it is illustrated by an exactly paral- 
lel theory in the domain of physical science, which places 
the origin of the sun in a primitive streak of mist, formed 
one knows not how. Subsequently, by a series of moral 
errors, the world became gradually worse and worse — true 
of the physical orders as well — until it assumed the dismal 
aspect it wears to-day. Excellent! The Greeks looked 
upon the world and the gods as the work of an inscrutable 
necessity. A passable explanation: we may be content 
with it until we can get a better. Again, Ormuzd and 
Ahriman are rival powers, continually at war. That is 
not bad. But that a God like Jehovah should have created 
this world of misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and be- 
cause he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped 
his hands in praise of his own work, and declared every- 
thing to be very good — that will not do at all! In its ex- 
planation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to 
any other form of religious doctrine professed by a civi- 
lized nation; and it is quite in keeping with this that it is 
the only one which presents no trace whatever of any be- 
lief in the immortality of the soul.* 

i * See " Parertra." vol. i. pp. 136 et seq. 



390 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

Even though Leibnitz' contention, that this is the best 
of all possible worlds, were correct, that would not justify 
God in having created it. For he is the Creator not of the 
world only, but of possibility itself; and, therefore, he 
ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would Admit 
of something better. 

There are two things which make it impossible to believe 
that this world is the successful work of an all- wise, all- 
good, and, at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the 
misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly the 
obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a 
burlesque of what he should be. These things cannot be 
reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are 
just the facts which support what I have been saying; they 
are our authority for viewing the world as the outcome of 
our own misdeeds, and therefore, as something that haci 
better not have been. While, under the former hypothesis, 
they amount to a bitter accusation against the Creator, and 
supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an 
indictment against our own nature, our own will, and 
teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that, 
like the children of a libertine, we come into the world 
with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only through 
having continually to atone for this sin that our existence 
is so miserable, and that its end is death. 

There is nothing more certain than the general truth 
that it is the grievous sin of the world which has produced 
the grievous suffering of the world. I am not referring 
here to the physical connection between these two things 
lying in the realm of experience; my meaning is meta- 
physical. Accordingly, the sole tiling that reconciles me 
to the Oid Testament is the story of the fall. In my eyes, 
it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though 
it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me 
no better explanation of our existence than that it is the 
result of some false step, some sin of which we are paying 
the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the 
thoughtful reader a popular, but, at the same time, pro- 
found treatise on this subject by Claudius* which exhibits 

* Translator's Note. — Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a popular 
poet, and friend of Klopstock, Herder and Lessing. He edited the 
" Wandsbecker Bote," in the fourth part of which, appeared the 
treatise mentioned above. He generally wrote under the pseudonym 
of " Asmus," and Schopenhauer often refers to him by this name. 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 391 

the essentially pessimistic spirit of Christianity, It is 
entitled; "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." 

Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the 
Hindoos, there is a glaring contrast. In the one case (with 
the exception, it must be confessed, of Plato), the object 
of ethics is to enable a man to lead a happy life; in the 
other, it is to free and redeem him from life altogether — as 
is directly stated in the very first words of the " Sankhya 
Karika." 

Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and 
the Christian idea of death. It is strikingly presented in 
a visible form on a fine antique sarcophagus in the gallery 
at Florence, which exhibits, in relief, the whole series of 
ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient times, from the 
formal offer to the evening when Hymen's torch lights the 
happy couple home. Compare with that the Christian 
coffin, draped in a mournful black and surmounted with a 
crucifix! How much significance there is in these two 
ways of finding comfort in death. They are opposed to 
each other, but each is right. The one points to the 
affirmation of the will to live, which remains sure of life 
for all time, however rapidly its forms may change. The 
other, in the symbol of suffering and death, points to the 
denial of the will to live, to redemption from this world, 
the domain of death and devil. And in the question 
between the affirmation and the denial of the will to live, 
Christianity is in the last resort right. 

The contrast which the New Testament presents when 
compared with the Old, according to the ecclesiastical view 
of the matter, is just that existing between my ethical 
system and the moral philosophy of Europe. The Old 
Testament represents man as under the dominion of law, 
m which, however, there is no redemption. The New 
Testament declares law to have failed, frees man from its 
dominion,* and in its stead preaches the kingdom of grace, 
to be won by faith, love of neighbor and entire sacrifice of 
self. This is the path of redemption from the evil of the 
world. The spirit of the New Testament is undoubtedly 
asceticism, however your protestants and rationalists may 
twist it to suit their purpose. Asceticism is the denial of 
the will to live; and the transition from the Old Testament 

* Cf. Romans vii: Galatians ii. iii, 



392 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

to the New, from the dominion of law to that of faith, from 
justification by works to redemption through the mediator, 
from the domain of sin and death to eternal life in Christ, 
means, when taken in its real sense, the transition from 
the merely moral virtues to the denial of the will to live. 

' My philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice 
and the love of mankind, aud points to the goal to which 
these virtues necessarily lead, if they are practiced in per- 
fection. At the same time it is candid in confessing that 
a man must turn his back upon the world, and that the 

I denial of the will to live is the way of redemption. It is 

/ therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament, 
while all other systems are couched in the spirit of the 
Old; that is to say, theoretically as well as practically, 
their result is Judaism— mere despotic theism. In this 
sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true 
Christian philosophy — however paradoxical a statement 

' this may seem to people who take superficial views instead 
of penetrating to the heart of the matter. 

If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, 
and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at 
it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard 

: this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony or 
£pya6Tr/pior, as the earliest philosophers called it.* Among 
the Christian Fathers, Origen, with praiseworthy courage, 
took this view,f which is further justified by certain ob- 
jective theories of life. I refer, not to my own philosophy 
alone, but to the wisdom of all ages, as expressed in Brah- 
manism and Buddhism, and in the sayings of Greek philo- 
sophers like Empedocles and Pythagoras; as also by Cicero, 
in his remark that the wise men of old used to teach that 
we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime com- 
mitted in another state of existence — a doctrine which 
formed part of the initiation into the mysteries. \ And 
Vaniui — whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an 
easier task than to confute him — puts the same thing in a 
very forcible way. " Man," he says, " is so full of every 
kind of misery that, were it not repugnant to the Christian 
religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits exist 

* Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. L. iii., c. 3, p. 399. 
f Augustine de civitate Dei., L. xi. c. 23. 
t Cf . " Fragmenta de pliilosopliia." 



ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WOULD. 393 

at all, they have, passed into human form and are now 
atoning for their crimes."* And true Christianity — using 
the word in its right sense — also regards our existence as 
the consequence of sin and error. 

If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will 
regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look 
upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its suf- 
ferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or ir- 
regular ; nay, you will find that everything is as it should 
be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of exist- 
ence in his own peculiar way. Among the evils of a penal 
colony is the society of those who form it; and if the reader 
is worthy of better company, he will need no words from 
me to remind him of what he has to put up with at pres- 
ent. If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man 
of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner 
of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common 
criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate 
himself. 

In general, however, it should be said that this view of 
life will enable us to contemplate the so-called imperfections 
of the great majority of men, their moral and intellectual 
deficiencies, and the resulting base type of countenance, 
without any surprise, to say nothing of indignation; for we 
shall never cease to reflect where we are, and that the men 
about us are beings conceived and born in sin, and living 
to atone for it. That is what Christianity means in speak- 
ing of the sinful nature of men. 

il Pardon's the word to all." f Whatever folly men com- 
mit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let 
us exercise forbearance; remembering that when these faults 
appear in others, it is our follies and vices that we behold. 
They are the shortcomings of humanity, to which we be- 
long; whose faults, one and all, we share; yes, even 
those very faults at which we now wax so indignant, 
merely because they have not yet appeared in ourselves. 
They are faults that do not lie on the surface. But they 
exist down there in the depths of our nature; and should 
anything call them forth, they will come and show them- 

* " De adtnirandis naturae arcanis; " dial L. p. 35. 
f " Cymbeline," Act v. Sc. 5. 



394 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

selves, just as we now see them in others. One man, it is 
true, may have faults that are absent in his fellow; and it 
is undeniable that the sum total of bad qualities is in some 
cases very large; for the difference of individuality between 
man and man passes all measure. 

In fact, the conviction that the world and man is 
something that had better not lrave been, is of a kind 
to fill us with indulgence toward one another. 
Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the 
proper form of address to be, not " Monsieur, Sir, mein 
Herr," but "my fellow-sufferer," Son malorum , compagnon 
demiseres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in 
keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and 
it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary 
thing in life — the tolerance, patience, regard and love of 
neighbor, of which every one stands in need, and which, 
therefore, every man owes to his fellow. 



THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE. 

This vanity finds expression in the whole way in which 
things exist: in the infinite nature of Time and Space, ae 
opposed to the finite nature of the individual in both; in 
the ever-passing present moment as the only mode of actual 
existence; in the interdependence and relativity of all 
things; in continual becoming without ever being; in 
constant wishing and never being satisfied; in the long 
battle which forms the history of life, where every effort is 
checked by difficulties, and stopped until they are overcome. 
Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely 
the form under which the will to live — the thing in itself 
and therefore imperishable — has revealed to it that its 
efforts are in vain; it is that agent by which at every 
moment all things in our hands become as nothing, and 
lose any real value they possess. 

That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as 
that which has never been. But of everything that exists 
you must say, in the next moment, that it has been. 
Hence something of great importance now past is inferior 
to something of little importance now present, in that the 
latter is a reality, and related to the former as something 
to nothing. 



THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE. 395 

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly 
existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non- 
existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, 
conies an equally long period when he must exist no more. 
The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be 
true. The crudest intellect cannot speculate on such a 
subject without having a presentiment that Time is some- 
thing ideal in its nature. This ideality of Time and Space 
is the key to every true system of metaphysics; because it 
provides for quite another order of things than is to be met 
with in the domain of nature. This is why Kant is so 
great. 

Of every event in our life we can say only for one 
moment that it is; forever after, that it was. Every even- 
ing we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us 
mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away, 
if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we 
are secretly conscious of our share in the inexhaustible 
spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find lifa 
in it again. 

Considerations of the kind touched on above might, 
indeed, lead us to embrace the belief that the greatest 
wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the 
supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all 
else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, 
such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly, 
for that which in the next moment exists no more, and 
vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious 
effort. 

The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the 
present — the ever-fleeting present. It lies, then, in the 
very nature of our existence to take the form of constant 
motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the 
rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man 
running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he 
runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like 
a pole balanced on the tip of one's finger: or like a planet, 
which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to 
hurry forward on its way. Unrest is the mark of 
existence. 

In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, 
but is swept onward at once in the hurrying whirlpool of 
change.; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must 



396 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope 
— in such a world, happiness is inconceivable. How can 
it dwell where, as Plato says, "continual Becoming and 
never Being "is the sole form of existence? In the first 
place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in 
striving after something which he thinks will make him 
so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only 
to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, 
and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And 
then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; 
for his life was never anything more than a present mo- 
ment always vanishing; and now it is over. 

At the same time it is a wonderful thing that, in the 
world of human beings as in that of animals in general, 
this manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by 
the agency of two simple impulses — hunger and the sex- 
ual instinct; aided a little, perhaps, by the influence of 
boredom, but by nothing else; and that, in the theater of 
life, these suffice to form the primum mobile of how com- 
plicated a machinery, setting in motion how strange and 
varied a scene! 

On looking a little closer, we find that inorganic matter 
presents a constant conflict between chemical forces, which 
eventually works dissolution; and on the other hand, that 
organic life is impossible without continual change of 
matter, and cannot exist if it does not receive perpetual 
help from without. This is the realm of finality; and its 
opposite would be an infinite existence, exposed to no at- 
tack from without, and needing nothing to support it; 
ocbi Go6dvra)S ov, the realm of eternal peace; ovrs yiyvojievor 
ovt£ dnoXXvfiEvov, some timeless changeless state, one and 
undi versified; the negative knowledge of which forms the 
dominant note of the Platonic philosophy. It is to some 
such state as this that the denial of the will to live opens 
up the way. 

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough 
mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There 
is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand 
some distance off. So, to gain anything we have longed 
for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even 
though we are always living in expectation of better 
things, at the same time we often repent and long to have 
the past back again V 7 e look upon the present as some 



THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE. 397 

thing to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as 
the way toward our goal. Hence most people, if they 
glance back when they come to the end of life, will find 
that all along they have been living ad interim: they will 
be surprised to find that the very tiling they disregarded 
and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expecta- 
tion of which they passed all their time. Of how many a 
man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until 
he danced into the arms of death! 

Then again, Low insatiable a creature is man. Every 
satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, 
so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual 
will. And why is this? The real reason is simply that, 
taken in itself, Will is the lord of all worlds; everything 
belongs to it, and therefore no one single thing can ever 
give it satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless. 
For all that, it must rouse our sympathy co think how very 
little the Will, this lord of the world, really gets when it 
takes the form of an individual; usually only just enough 
to keep the body together. This is why man is so very 
miserable. 

Life presents itself chiefly as a task — the task, I mean, 
of subsisting at all, ganger sa vie. If this is accomplished, 
life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of 
doing something with that which has been won — of ward- 
ing off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over 
us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. 
The first task is to win something; the second, to banish 
the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a -burden. 

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth 
of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that 
man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; 
and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a 
state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but 
abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that exist- 
ence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but 
the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life — the craving 
for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed 
of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such 
thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in 
itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we 
take no delight in existence except when we are struggling 
for something; and then distance and difficulties to be 



398 STUDIES 12? PESSIMISM. 

overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us 
— an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else 
when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest 
— where in reality we have stepped forth from life to look 
upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spec- 
tators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means 
nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment 
its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one 
of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and 
worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what 
we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange 
and uncommon — an innate and ineradicable tendency of 
human nature — shows how glad we are at any interruption 
of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious. 

That this most perfect manifestation of the will to live, 
the human organism, with the cunning and complex work- 
ing of its machinery, must fall to dust and yield up itself 
and all its strivings to extinction — this is the naive way in 
which Nature, who is always so true and sincere in what 
she says, proclaims the whole struggle of this will as in its 
very essence barren and unprofitable. Were it of any value 
in itself, anything unconditioned and absolute, it could 
not thus end in mere nothing. 

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, 
and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their 
little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in 
rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in 
its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridic- 
ulous it all seems! It is like a drop of water seen through 
a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria or a 
speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. 
How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle 
with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, 
or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity 
produces a comic effect. 

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. 
It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the 
powerful lenses of Time and Space. 



ON SUICIDE. 393 

OX SUICIDE. 

As fak as I know, none but the votaries of monotheistic, 
that is to say, Jewish religions, look upon suicide as a 
crime. This is all the more striking, inasmuch as neither 
in the Old nor ill the New Testament is there to be found 
any prohibition or positive disapproval of it; so that reli- 
gious teachers are forced to base their condemnation of sui- 
cide on philosophical grounds of their own invention. 
These are so very bad that writers of this kind endeavor to 
make up for the weakness of their arguments by the strong 
terms in which they express their abhorrence of the prac- 
tice; in other words, they declaim against it. They tell 
us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only 
a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of 
the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark 
that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there 
is nothing in the world to which every man has a more un- 
assailable title than to his own life and person. 

Suicide, as I have said, is actually accounted a crime* 
and a crime which, especially under the vulgar bigotry 
that prevails in England, is followed by an ignominious 
burial and the seizure of the man's property; and for that 
reason, in a case ot suicide, the jury almost always bring in 
a verdict of insanity. Now let the reader's own moral 
feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal 
act Think of the impression that would be made upon 
you by the news that some one you know had committed 
the crime, say, of murder or theft, or been guilty of some 
act of cruelty or deception; and compare it with your feel- 
ings when you hear that he has met a voluntary death. 
While in the one case a lively sense of indignation and ex- 
treme resentment will be aroused, and you will call loudlv 
for punishment or revenge, in the other you will be moved 
:o grief and sympathy; and mingled with your thoughts 
will be admiration for his courage, rather than the moral 
disanproval which follows upon a wicked action. Who has 
not had acquaintances, friends, relations, who of their own 
free will have left this world; and are these to be thought 
of with horror as criminals? Most emphatically, No! 1 
am rather of opinion that the clergy should be challenged 
to explain what right they have to go into the pulpit, or 
take up their pens, and stamp as a crime an action which 



400 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

many men whom we hold in affection and honor have 
committed: and to refuse an honorable burial to those 
who relinquish this world voluntarily. They have no 
Biblical authority to boast of, as justifying their condem- 
nation of suicide; nay, not even any philosophical argu- 
ments that will hold water; and it must be understood 
that it is arguments we want, and that we will not be put 
off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal 
law forbids suicide, that is not an argument valid in the 
Church; and besides, the prohibition is ridiculous; for 
what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death 
itself? If the law punishes people for trying to commit 
suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the 
attempt a failure. 

The ancients, moreover, were very far from regarding 
the matter in that light. Pliny says: " Life is not so desir- 
able a thing as to be protracted at any cost. Whoever you 
are, you are sure to die, even though your life has been full 
of abomination and crime. The chief of all remedies for 
% troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings 
which Mature gives to man, there is none greater than an 
opportune death; and the best of it is that every one 
can avail himself of it."* And elsewhere the same writer 
declares: " Not even to God are all things possible; for 
he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die, 
and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life, this is the 
best of his gifts to man."f Nay, in Messilia and on the 
isle of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons for re- 
linquishing his life, was handed the cup of hemlock by the 
magistrate; and that, too, in public. J And in ancient 
times, how many heroes and wise men died a voluntary 
death. Aristotle, § it is true, declared suicide to be an 
offense against the state, although not against the person; 
but in Stobams' exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy 
there is the following remark: "The good man should 
flee life when his misfortunes become too great; the bad 

* Hist. Nat. Lib. xxviii., 1. 
f Loc. cit. Lib. ii c. 7. 

\ Valerius Maximus; hist. Lib. ii., c. 6,§ 7 et 8. Heraelides Pon 
ticus; fragmenta de rebus publicus, ix. Aeliani variae historic, lii 
36. Scrabo; Lib. x, c. 5, 6. 

§ Eih. Niehom., v. 15. 



ON SUICIDE. 401 

man, also, when he is too prosperous. And similarly: So 
he will marry and beget children and take part in the 
affairs of the state, and generally, practice virtue and 
continue to live; and then, again, if need be, at any time ne- 
cessity compels him, he will depart to his place of refuge in 
the tomb/'* And we find that the Stoics actually praised 
suicide as a noble and heroic action, as hundreds of pas- 
sages show; above all in the works of Seneca, who expresses 
the strongest approval of it. As is well known, the Hindoos 
look upon suicide as a religious act, especially when it 
takes the form of self-immolation by widows; but also 
when it consists in casting one's self under the wheels of the 
chariot of the god at Juggernaut, or being eaten by croco- 
diles in the Ganges, or being drowned in the holy tanks in 
the temples, and so on. The same thing occurs on the 
stage — that mirror of life. For example, in " L/orphelin 
de la Chine, "f a celebrated Chinese play, almost all the 
noble characters end by suicide; without the slightest hint 
anywhere, or any impression being produced on the specta- 
tor, that they are committing a crime. And in our own 
theater it is much the same — Palmira, for instance, in 
"Mahomet," or Mortimer in "Maria Stuart,'* Othello, 
Countess Terzky.J Is Hamlet's monologue the meditation 
of a criminal? He merely declares that if we had any cer- 
tainty of being annihilated by it, death would be infinitely 
preferable to the world as it is. But there lies the rub! 

The reasons advanced against suicide by the clergy of 
monotheistic, that is to say, Jewish religions, and by those 
philosophers who adapt themselves hitherto, are w 7 eak 
sophisms which can easily be refuted.§ The most thorough- 
going refutation of them is given by Hume in his " Essay 
on Suicide." This did not appear until after his death, 
when it was immediately suppressed, owing to the scandal- 
ous bigotry and outrageous ecclesiastical tyranny that pre- 
vailed in England; and hence only a very few copies of it 

* Stobaeus. Ed. Eth. ii., c. 7, pp. 286, 312, 

f Traduit par St. Julien, 1834. 

% Translator's Note — Palmira: a female slave in Goethe's play of 
•• Mahomet " Mortimer: a would-be lover and rescuer of Mary in 
Schiller's " Maria Stuart." Countess Terzky a leading character 
in Schiller's " Wallenstein's Tod." 

§ See my treatise on the "Foundation of Morals," § 5. 



402 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

were sold under cover of secrecy and at a high price. This 
and another treatise by that great man have come to us 
from Basle, and we may be thankful for the reprint.* It 
is a great disgrace to the English nation that a purely 
philosophical treatise, which, proceeding from one of the 
first thinkers and writers in England, aimed at refuting 
the current arguments against suicide by the light of cold 
reason, should be forced to sneak about in that country, as 
though it were some rascally production, until at last it 
found refuge on the continent. At the same time it shows 
what a good conscience the Church has in such matters. 

In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason 
existing against suicide on the score of morality. It is 
this: that suicide thwarts the attainment of the highest 
moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this 
world of misery, it substitutes one that is merely apparent.] 
But from a mistake to a crime is a far cry; and it is as a 
crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard 
suicide. 

The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suf- 
fering — the Cross — is the real end and object of life. Hence 
Christianity condemns suicide as thwarting this end; 
while the ancient world, taking a lower point of view, held 
it in approval, nay, in honor, but if that is to be accounted 
a valid reason against suicide, it involves the recognition 
of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid only from a much 
higherethical standpoint than hasever been adopted by moral 
philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high stand- 
point,there is no tenable reason left,on the score of morality, 
for condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and 

* " Essays on Suicide" and the " Immortality of the Soul," by the 
late David Hume, Basle, 1799, sold by James Decker. 

f Translator's Note. — Schopenhauer refers to " Die Welt als Wille 
und Vorstellung," vol. i., £ 69, where the reader may find the same 
argument stated at somewhat greater length. According to Schopen- 
hauer, moral freedom — the highest ethical aim — is to be obtained only 
by a denial of the will to live. Far from being a denial, suicide is an 
emphatic assertion of this will. For it is in fleeing from the pleas- 
ures, not from the sufferings of life, that this denial consists. When a 
man destroys his existence as an individual, by is not by any means 
destroying his will to live. On the contrary, he would like to live if 
he could do so with satisfaction to himself; if he could assert his will 
against the power oi circumstance; but circumstance is too strong foi 
him. 



ON SUICIDE. 403 

zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attack 
suicide is not supported either by any passages in the 
Bible or by any considerations of weight; so that it looks 
as though they must have some secret reason for their con- 
tention. May it not be this — that the voluntary surrender 
of life is a bad compliment for him who said that " all 
things were very good ? " If this is so, it offers another 
instance of the crass optimism of these religions, denounc- 
ing suicide to escape being denounced by it. 

It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of 
life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of 
death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors 
of death offer considerable resistance; they stand like a 
sentinel at the gate leading out of this world. Perhaps 
there is no man alive who would not have already put an 
end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative 
character, a sudden stoppage of existence. There is some- 
thing positive about ic; it is the destruction of the body; 
and a man shrinks from that because his body is the mani- 
festation of the will to live. 

However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, 
not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in 
consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body 
and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, 
or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to 
other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In the 
same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to 
bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the 
other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a 
pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes 
suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it 
loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured bv 
an excess of mental suffering. This is especially evident 
in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some 
purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special ef- 
fort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such 
people require to be worked up in order to take the step; 
but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given 
leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring 
their life to an end. 

When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach 
the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby 
banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of 



404 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of 
greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing 
happens. 

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a ques- 
tion which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an 
answer. The question is this: What change will death 
produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the 
nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for 
it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which 
puts the question and awaits the answer. 



IMMORTALITY:* A DIALOGUE. 
Thrasymachos — Philalethes. 

Thrasymachos. — Tell me now, in one word, what 
shall 1 be after my death? And mind you be clear and 
precise. 

Philalethes. — All and nothing. 

Thrasymachus. — I thought so! I gave you a problem 
and you solve it by a contradiction. That's a very stale 
trick. 

Philalethes. Yes, but you raise transcendental ques- 
tions, and you expect me to answer them in language that 
is only made for immanent knowledge. It's no wonder 
that a contradiction ensues. 

Thrasymachos. — What do you mean by transcendental 
questions and immanent knowledge? I've heard these ex- 
pressions before, of course; they are not new to me. The 
professor was fond of using them, but only as predicates of 
the Deity, and he never talked of anything else; which was 
all quite right and proper. He argued thus! if the Deity 

* Translator's Note. — The word immortality — " Unsterblichkeit " 
— does not occur in the original; nor would it, in its usual application 
find a place in Schopenhauer's vocabulary. The word he uses is 
" Unzerstorbarkeit " — indestructibility. But I have preferred immor- 
tality, because that word is commonly associated with the subject 
touched upon in this little debate. If any critic doubts the wisdom 
of this preference, let me ask him to try his hand at a short, concise, 
and, at the same time, popularly intelligible rendering: of the Ger- 
man original, which runs thus: " Zur Lehre von der Unzerstorbar- 
keit unseres wahren Wesens durch den Tod: kleine dialogische 
Schlussbelustiguug/' 



1MM0U1ALITY, 405 

was in the world itself, lie was immanent; if he was some- 
where outside it, he was transcendent. Nothing could be 
clearer and more obvious. You knew where you were. 
But this Kantian rigmarole won't do any more: it's anti- 
quated and no longer applicable to modern ideas. Why, 
we've had a whole row of eminent men in the metropolis of 
German learning 

Philalethes (aside). — German humbug, he means. 

Thrasymachos. — The mighty Schleiermacher, for in= 
stance, and that gigantic intellect, Hegel; and at this time 
of day we've abandoned that nonsense. I should rather 
say we're so far beyond it that we can't put up with it any 
more. What's the use of it then? What does it all 
mean? 

Philalethes. — Transcendental knowledge is knowledge 
which passes beyond the bounds of possible experience, ami 
strives to determine the nature of things as they are in 
themselves. Immanent knowledge, on the other hand, is 
knowledge which confines itseit' entirely within those 
bounds; so that it cannot apply to anything but actual 
phenomena. As iar as you are an individual, death will 
be the end of you. But your individuality is not your true 
and inmost being: it is only the outward manifestation of 
it. It is not the thing in-itself, but only the phenomenon 
presented in the form of time; and therefore with a begin- 
ning and an end. But your real being knows neither time 
nor beginning nor end, nor yet the limits of any given in- 
dividual. It is everywhere present in every individual, and 
no individual can exist apart from it. So when death comes, 
on the one hand you are annihilated as an individual; on the 
other, you are and remain everything. That is what I 
meant when I said that after your death you would be all 
and nothing. It is difficult to find a more precise answer 
to your question and at the same time be brief. The 
answer is contradictory, I admit; but itis so simply because 
your life is in time, and the immortal part of you in eter- 
nity. You may put the matter thus: Your immortal part 
is something that does not last in time and yet is inde- 
structible; but there you have another contradiction. You 
see what happened by trying to bring the transcendental 
within the limits of immanent knowledge. It is in some 
sort doing violence to the latter by misusing it for ends it 
was never meant to serve. 



406 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

Thrasymachos. — Look here, I shaVt give twopence 
for your immortality unless Fin to remain an individual. 

Philalethes. — Well, perhaps I may be able to satisfy 
you on this point. Suppose I guarantee that after death 
you shall remain an individual, but only on condition that 
you first spend three months of complete unconsciousness. 

Thrasymachos. — I shall have no objection to that. 

Philalethes. — But remember, if people are completely 
unconscious, they take no account of time. So, when you 
are dead, it's all the same to you whether three months 
pass in the world of unconsciousness, or ten thousand years. 
In one case as in the other, it is simply a matter of believ- 
ing what is told you when you awake. So far, then you 
can afford to be indifferent whether it is three months or 
ten thousand years that pass before you recover your indi- 
viduality. 

Thrasymachos. — Yes, if it comes to that, I suppose 
you're right. 

Philalethes. — And if by chance, after those ten thou- 
sand years have gone by, no one ever thinks of awaking 
you, I fancy it would be no great misfortune. You would 
have become quite accustomed to non-existence after so 
long a spell of it — following upon such a very few years of 
life. At any rate you may be sure you would be perfectly 
ignorant of the whole thing. Further, if you knew that 
the mysterious power which keeps you in your present 
state of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand 
years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself, and to 
endow them with life, it would fully console you. 

Thrasymachos. — Indeed! So you think you're quietly 
going to do me out of my individuality with all this fine 
talk. But I'm up to your tricks. I tell you I won't exist 
unless I can have my individuality. I'm not going to put 
off with " mysterious powers," and what you call ". pheno- 
mena." I can't do without my individuality, and I won't 
give it up. 

Phtlalethes. — You mean, I suppose, that your indivi- 
duality is such a delightful thing — so splendid, so perfect, 
and beyond compare — that you can't imagine anything 
better. Aren't you ready to exchange your present state 
for one which, if we can judge by what is told us, may 
possibly be superior and more endurable? 

Thrasymachos. — Don't vou see that my individuality 



IMMORTALITY. 40? 

be it what it may, is my very self? To me it is the mo6t 
important thing in the world, 

" For God is God and I am I." 

I want to exist, 7, /. That's the main thing. I don't 
care about an existence which has to be proved to be mine, 
before I can believe it. 

Pihlalethes. — Think what you're doing! When you 
say /, /, I want to exist, it is not you alone that says this. 
Everything says it, absolutely everything that has the 
faintest trace of consciousness. It follows then, that thi* 
desire of yours is just the part of you that is not individ* 
ual — the part that is common to all things without dis- 
tinction. It is the cry, not of the individual, but of 
existence itself; it is the intrinsic element in everything 
that exists, nay, it is the cause of anything existing at all. 
This desire craves for and so is satisfied with nothing less 
than existence in general — not any definite individual ex* 
istence. No! that is not its aim. It seems to be so only 
because this desire — this will — attains consciousness only 
in the individual, and therefore looks as though it were 
concerned with nothing but the individual. There lies the 
illusion, an illusion it is true, in which the individual is 
held fast: but, if he reflects, he can break the fetters and 
set himself free. It is only indirectly, I say, that the in- 
dividual has this violent craving for existence. It is the 
will to live which is the real and direct aspirant — alike 
and identical in all things. Since then, existence is the 
free work, nay, the mere reflection of the will, where ex- 
istence is, there too, must be will: and for the moment, 
the will finds its satisfaction in existence itself; so far, I 
mean, as that which never rests, but presses forward 
eternally, can ever find any satisfaction at all. The will is 
careless of the individual: the individual is not its business; 
although, as I have said, this seems to be the case, because 
the individual has no direct consciousness of will except in 
himself. The effect of this is to make the individual care- 
ful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, 
there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. 
From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form o* 
perfection, but rather of limitation: and sc to be freer* 
from it is not loss but gain. Trouble vourself no mor- 



408 STUDIES JN PESSIMISM. 

about the matter. Once thoroughly recognize what yon 
are, what your existence really is, namely, the universal 
will to live and the whole question will seem to you childish 
and most ridiculous! 

Thrasymachos. — You're childish yourself and most 
ridiculous, like all philosophers! and if a man of my age 
lets himself in for a quarter-of-an-hour's talk with such 
fools, it is only because it amuses me and passes the time. 
I've more important business to attend to, so good-by. 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 

There is an unconscious propriety iu the way in which, 
in all European languages, the word person is commonly 
used to denote a human being. The real meaning of per- 
sona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on 
the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows 
himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. 
Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be 
likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who 
is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a block- 
head is quite at home in it. 



Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us 
the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, 
does it not tell us what the future will be? This is pre- 
cisely why reason is such an excellent power of restraint in 
moments when we are possessed by some base passion, some 
fit of anger,- some covetous desire, that will lead us to do 
things whereof we must presently repent. 



Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head: 
and neither feeling is quite within our control. For we 
cannot alter our heart; its bias is determined by motives; 
and our head deals with objective facts and applies to 
them rules which are immutable. Any given individual is 
',he union of a particular heart with a particular head. 

Hatred and contempt are diametrically opposed and 
mutually exclusive. There are even not a few cases where 
hatred of a person is rooted in nothing but forced esteem 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 409 

for his qualities. And besides, if a man sets out to hate 
k\\ the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much 
energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, 
one and all, with the greatest ease. True, genuine contempt 
is just the reverse of true, genuine pride; it keeps quite 
quiet and gives no sign of its existence. For if a mail 
shows that he despises you, he signifies at least this much 
regard for you, that he wants to let you know how little 
he appreciates you; and his wish is dictated by hatred, 
which cannot exist with real contempt. On the contrary, 
if it is genuine, it is simply the conviction that the object 
of it is a man of no value at all. Contempt is not incom- 
patible with indulgent and kindly treatment, and for the 
sake of one's own peace and safety, this should not be 
omitted; it will prevent irritation; and there is no one who 
cannot do harm if he is roused to it. But if this pure, 
cold, sincere contempt ever shows itself, it will be met 
with the most truculent hatred; for the despised person is 
not in a position to fight contempt with its own weapons. 



Melancholy is a very differe7it thing from bad humor, 
and of the two, it is not nearly so far removed from a gay 
and happy temperament. Melancholy attracts, while bad 
humor repels. 

Hypochondria is a species of torment which not only 
makes us unreasonably cross with the things of the present; 
not only fills us with groundless anxiety on the score of 
future misfortunes entirely of our own manufacture; but 
also leads to unmerited self-reproach for what we have done 
in the past. 

Hypochondria shows itself in a perpetual hunting after 
things that vex and annoy, and then brooding over them. 
The cause of it is an inward morbid discontent, often co- 
existing with a naturally restless temperament. In their 
extreme form, this discontent and this unrest lead to. 
suicide. 



Any incident, however trivial, that rouses disagreeable 
emotion, leaves an after-effect in our mind, which, for the 
time it lasts, prevents our taking a clear objective view of 
the things about us, and tinges all our thoughts: just as a 



£10 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

small object held close to the eye limits and distorts our 
field of vision. 



What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man 
has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own 
troubles. Hence if a man suddenly finds himself in an 
unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his 
being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in 
any other than a happy position, or this becomes his per- 
manent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it 
so far removes him from suffering that lie is incapable of 
feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor 
often show themselves more ready to help than the rich. 



At times it seems as though we both wanted and did not 
want the same thing, and felt at once glad and sorry about 
it. For instance, if on some fixed date we are going to be 
put to a decisive test about anything in which it would be 
a great advantage to us to come off victorious, we shall be 
anxious for it to take place at once, and at the same time 
we shall tremble at the thought of its approach. And if, 
in the meantime, we hear that, for once in a way, the date 
has been postponed, we snail experience a feeling both of 
pleasure and of annoyance; for the news is disappointing, 
but nevertheless it affords us momentary relief. It is juat 
the same thing if vve are expecting some important letter 
carrying a definite decision, and it fails to arrive. 

In such cases there are really two different motives at 
work in us; the stronger but more distant of the two being 
the desire to stand the test and to have the decision given 
in our favor; and the weaker, which touches us more 
nearly, the wish to be left for the present in peace and 
quiet, and accordingly in further enjoyment of the 
•advantage which at any rate attaches to a state of hopeful 
uncertainty, compared with the possibility that the issue 
may be unfavorable. 



In my head there is a permanent opposition party; and 
whenever I take any step or come to any decision — though 
I may have given the matter mature consideration — it 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 411 

afterward attacks what I have done, without, however, 
being each time necessarily in the right. This is, I sup- 
pose, only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit 
of scrutiny; bat it often reproaches me when I do not 
deserve it. The same thing, no doubt, happens to many 
others as well; for where is the man who can help thinking 
that, after all, it were better not to have done something 
he did with every hope of success: 

"Quid tam dextro pedeconcipis ut te 
Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti?" 



Why is it that common is an expression of contempt? anu 
that uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished, denote 
approbation? Why is everything that is common con- 
temptible? 

Common in its original meaning denotes that which is 
peculiar to all men, i. e., shared equally by the whole 
species, and therefore an inherent part of its nature. 
Accordingly, if an individual possesses no qualities beyond 
those which attach to mankind in general, he is a common 
man. Ordinary is a much milder word, and refers rather 
to intellectual character; whereas common has more of a 
moral application. 

What value can a creature have that is not a whit different 
from millions of its kind? Millions, do I say? nay, an 
infinitude of creatures which, century after century, in 
never-ending flow, nature sends bubbling up from her in- 
exhaustible springs; as generous with them as the smith 
with the useless sparks that fly around his anvil. 

It is obviously quite right that a creature which has no 
qualities except those of the species, should have to confine 
its claim to an existence entirely within the limits of the 
species, and live a life conditioned by those limits. 

In various passages of my works.* I have argued that 
while a lower animal possesses nothing more than the 
generic character of its species, man is the only being 
which can lay claim to possess an individual character. 
But in most men this individual character comes to very 
little in reality; and they may be almost all ranged under 

* " Grundprobleme der Ethik," p. 48; " Welt als Will* ^nd Vor 
etellung." vol. i. p. 338. 



41 2 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

certain classes: ce sont des especes. Their thoughts and 
desires, like their faces, are those of the species, or at any 
rate, those of the class to which they belong: and accord- 
ingly, they are of a trivial, every-day, common character, 
and exist by the thousand. You can usually tell before- 
hand what they are likely to do and say. They have no 
special stamp or mark to distinguish them; they are like 
manufactured goods, all of a piece. 

If, then, their nature is merged in that of the species, 
how shall their existence go beyond it? The curse of vul- 
garity puts men on a par with the lower animals, by allow- 
ing them none but a generic nature, a generic form of 
existence. 

Anything that is high or great or noble must then, as a 
matter of course, ami by its very nature, stand alone in a 
world where no betcer expression can be found to denote 
what is base and contemptible than that which I have 
mentioned as in general use, namely, common. 



Will, as the thing-in-itself, is the foundation of all 
being; it is part and parcel of every creature, and the per- 
manent element in everything. Will, then, is that which 
we possess in common with all men, nay, with all animals, 
and even with lower forms of existence; and in so far we 
are akin to everything — so far, that is, as everything is 
filled to overflowing with will. On the other hand, that 
which places one being over another, and sets differences 
between man and man, is intellect and knowledge; there- 
fore in every manifestation of self we should, as far as 
possible, give play to the intellect alone; for, as we have 
seen, the will is the common part of us. Every violent 
exhibition of will is common and vulgar; in other words, it 
reduces us to the level of the species, and makes us a mere 
type and example of it; in that it is just the character of 
the species that we are showing. So every fit of anger is 
something common — every unrestrained display of joy, or 
of hate, or fear — in short, every form of emotion; in other 
words, every movement of the will, if it is so strong as 
decidedly to outweigh the intellectual element in conscious 
noss, and to make the man appear as a being that wills 
rather than knows. 

In giving way to emotion of this violent kind, the 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 413 

greatest genius puts himself on a level with the commonest 
son of earth. Contrarily, if a man desires to be absolutely- 
uncommon, in other words, great, he should never allow 
his consciousness to be taken possession of and dominated 
by the movement of his will, however much he may be 
solicited thereto. For example, he must be able to observe 
that other people are badly disposed toward him, without 
feeling any hatred toward them himself; nay, there is no 
surer sign of a great mind than that it refuses to notice 
annoying and insulting expressions, but straightway 
ascribes them, as it ascribes countless other mistakes, to 
the defective knowledge of the speaker, and so merely 
observes without feeling them. This is the meaning of 
that remark of Graciau, that nothing is more unworthy of 
a man than to let it be seen that he is one — el mayor des- 
doro de un hombre es dar mueatras de que es Jiombre. 

And even in the drama, which is the peculiar province 
of the passions and emotions, it is easy for them to appear 
common and vulgar. And this is specially observable in 
the works of the French tragic writers, who set no other 
aim before themselves but the delineation of the passions; 
and by indulging at one moment in a vaporous kind of 
pathos which makes them ridiculous, at another in epigram- 
matic witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their 
subject. I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle 
Rachel as Maria Stuart; and when she burst out in fury 
against Elizabeth — though she did it very well — I could 
not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the 
final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true 
tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion 
at all. The same part was incomparably better played by 
the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, though 
in many respects very different from the German, shares 
its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and tiue in Art; 
herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays 
that it possesses none of this feeling whatever. 

The noble, in other words, the uncommon, element in 
the drama — nay, what is sublime in it — is not reached 
until the intellect is set to work, as opposed to the will; 
until it takes a free flight over all those passionate move- 
ments of that will, and makes them the subject of its con- 
templation. Shakespeare, in particular, shows that this 
is his general method, more especially in Hamlet. And 



414 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

only when intellect rises to the point where the vanity of 
all effort is manifest, and the will proceeds to an act of 
self-annulment, is the drama tragic in the true sense of the 
word: it is then that it reaches its highest aim in becom- 
ing really sublime. 



Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for 
ihe limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect 
as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy 
that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains 
many things, and among them the fact that every one 
measures us with his own standard — generally about as 
long as a tailor's tape, and we have to put up with it: as 
also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself — a 
supposition which is once for all taken for granted. 



There is no doubt that many a man owes his good 
fortune in life solely to the circumstance that he has a 
pleasant way of smiling, and so wins the heart in his 
favor. 

However, the heart woirid do better to be careful, and to 
remember what Hamlet put down in his tablets — " that 
one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." 



Everything that is really fundamental in a man, and 
therefore genuine, works, as such, unconsciously; in this 
respect like the power of nature. That which has passed 
through the domain of consciousness is thereby trans- 
formed into an idea or picture; and so if it comes to be 
uttered, it is only an idea or picture which passes from one 
person to another. 

Accordingly, any quality of mind or character that is 
genuine and lasting, is originally unconscious; and it is 
only when unconsciously brought into play that it makes a 
profound impression. If any like quality is consciously 
exercised, it means that it has been worked up; it becomes 
intentional, and therefore a matter of affectation, in other 
words, of deception. 

If a man does a thing unconsciously, it costs him no 
trouble; but if he tries to do it by taking trouble, he fails. 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 415 

This applies to the origin of those fundamental ideas 
which form the pith and marrow of all genuine work. 
Only that which is innate is genuine and will hold water; 
and every man who wants to achieve something, whether 
in practical life, in literature, or in art, must " follow the 
rules without knowing them." 



Men of very great capacity will, as a rule, find the com- 
pany of very stupid people preferable to that of the com- 
mon run; for the same reason that the tyrant and the mob, 
the grandfather and the grandchildren, are natural allies. 



That line of Ovid's, 

"Pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terrain," 

can be applied in its true physical sense to the lower 
animals alone; but in a metaphorical and spiritual sense it 
is, alas! true of nearly all men as well. All their plans 
and projects are merged in the desire of physical enjoy- 
ment, physical well-being. They may, indeed, have per- 
sonal interests, often embracing a very varied sphere; but 
still these latter receive their importance entirely from the 
relation in which they stand to the former. This is not 
only proved by their manner of life and the things they 
say, but it even shows itself in the way they look, the 
expression of their physiognomy, their gait and gesticula- 
tions. Everything about them cries out: in terramprona! 
It is not to them, it is only to the nobler and more highly 
endowed natures — men who really think and look about 
them in the world, and form exceptional specimens of hu- 
manity — that the next lines are applicable: 

"Os houiini sublime dedit coelumque tueri 
Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere voltus." 



No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering 
he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to 
activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a 
mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which 
it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; 



416 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water 
is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth 
contained in it. 



Why is it that in spite of all the mirrors in the world, 
no one really knows what, he looks like? 

A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not 
his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of 
applying the maxim, " Know thyself." 

This is partly, no doubt, to be explained by the fact 
that it is physically impossible for a man to see himself in 
the glass except with face turned straight toward it and 
perfectly motionless; where the expression of the eye, 
which counts for so much, and really gives its whole char- 
acter to the face, is to a great extent lost. But co-existing 
with this physical impossibility, there seems to me to be an 
ethical impossibility of an analogous nature, and produc- 
ing the same effect. A man cannot look upon his own re- 
flection as though the person presented there were a 
stranger to him; and yet this is necessary if he is to take 
an objective view. In the last resort, an objective view 
means a deep-rooted feeling on the part of the individual, 
as a moral being, that that which he is contemplating is 
not himself; * and unless he can take this point of view, 
he will not see things in a really true light, which is possi- 
ble only if he is alive to their actual detects, exactly as 
they are. Instead of that, when a man sees himself in the 
glass, something out of his own egoistic nature whispers to 
him to take care to remember that it is no stranger, 
but himself, that he is looking at; and this operates as a 
nolime taiigere, and prevents him taking an objective view. 
It seems, indeed, as if, without the leaven of a grain of 
malice, such a view were impossible. 



According as a man's mental energy is exerted or re- 
laxed, will life appear to him either so short, and petty, 
and fleeting, that nothing can possibly happen over which 
it is worth his while to spend emotion; that nothing really 

* Cf. "Grundprobleme derEthik." p. 275. 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 41? 

matters, whether it is pleasure or riches, or even fame, and 
that in whatever way a man ma}' have failed, he cannot 
have lost much — or. on the other hand, life will seem so 
long, so important, so all in all, so momentous and so full 
of difficulty that we have to plunge into it with our whole 
soul if we are to obtain a share of its goods, make sure of 
its prizes, and cany out our plans. This latter is the im- 
manent and common view of life; it is what Gracian 
means when he speaks of the serious way of looking at 
things — tomar muy de veras el vivir. The former is the 
transcendental view, which is well expressed in Ovid's 
non est tanti — it is not worth so much trouble; still 
better, however, by Plato's remark that nothing in human 
affairs is worth any great anxiety — ovrs n tgjv dvhftoaTtivscv 
aiiov k6rl /isydXr?*; (37tovdr/<i. This condition of mind is due to 
the intellect having got the upper hand in the domain of con- 
sciousness, where, freed from the mere service of the will, it 
looks upon the phenomena of life objectively, and so can- 
not fail to gain a clear insight into its vain and futile char- 
acter. But in the other condition of mind, will predom- 
inates; and the intellect exists only to light it on its way 
to the attainment of its desires. 

A man is great or small according as he leans to the one 
or the other of these views of life. 



People of very brilliant ability think little of admitting 
their errors and weaknesses, or of letting others see them. 
They look upon them as something for which they have 
duly paid; and instead of fancying that these weaknesses 
are a disgrace to them, they consider they are doing them 
an honor. This is especially the case when the errors are 
of the kind that hang together with their qualities — con- 
ditioner sine quibus non — or as George Sand said, les defauts 
de ses vert us. 



Contrarily, these are people of good character and irre- 
proachable intellectual capacity, who, far from admitting 
the few little weaknesses they have, conceal them with 
care, and show themselves very sensitive to any suggestion 
of their existence; and this, just because their whole merit 
consists in being free from error and infirmity. If these 



418 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

people are found to have done any tiling wrong, their repu< 
tation immediately suffers. 



With people of only moderate ability, mcdesty is mere 
honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hy- 
pocrisy. Hence it is just as becoming in the latter to 
make no secret of the respect they bear themselves and no 
disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual 
power, us it is in the former to be modest. Valerius 
Maximus gives some very neat examples of this in his 
chapter on self-confidence, defiducia sui. 



Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet with- 
out a mirror. But it is still worse to take a decision with- 
out consulting a friend. For a man may have the 
most excellent judgment in all other matters, and yet go 
wrong in those which concern himself; because here the 
will comes in and deranges the intellect at once. There- 
fore let a man take counsel of a friend. A doctor can 
cure every one but himself; if he falls ill, he sends for a 
colleague. 



In all that we do, we wish, more or less, to come to the 
end; we are impatient to finish and glad to be done. But 
the last scene of all, the general end, is something that, as 
a rule, we wish as far off as may be. 



Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming 
together again a foretaste of the resurrection. This is 
svhy even people who were indifferent to each other, rejoice 
30 much if they come together again after twenty or thirty 
years' separation. 



Intellects differ from one another in a very real and 
fundamental way; but no comparison can well be made by 
merely general observations. It is necessary to come olose, 
and to go into details; for the difference that exists cannot 
be seen from afar*, and it is not easy to judge by outward 



F UR TITER PSYCHOLOGICAL GBSER VA TIOAS. 4 ] 9 

appearances, as in the several cases cf education, leisure 
and occupation. But even judging by these alone, it must 
be admitted that many a man has a degree of existence at 
least ten times as high as another — in other words, exists 
ten times as much. 



I am not speaking here of savages whose life is often 
only one degree above that of the apes in their woods. 
Consider, for instance, a porter in Naples or Venice (in 
the north of Europe solicitude for the winter months 
makes people more thoughtful and therefore reflective); 
look at the life he leads, from its beginning to its end — 
driven by poverty; living on his physical strength; meeting 
the needs of every day, nav, of every hour, by hard work, 
great effort, constant tumult, want in all its forms, no care 
for the morrow; his only comfort, rest after exhaustion; 
continuous quarreling; not a moment free for reflection; 
such sensual delights as a mild climate and only just suf- 
ficient food will permit of; and then, finally, as the 
metaphysical element, the crass superstition of his church; 
the whole forming a manner of life with only a low degree 
of consciousness, where a man hustles, or rather is hustled, 
through his existence. This restless and confused dream 
forms the life of how many millions! 

Such men think only just so much as is necessary to 
carry out their will for the moment. They never reflect 
upon their life as a connected whole, let alone, then, upon 
existence in general; to a certain extent they may be said 
to exist without really knowing it. The existence of the 
mobsman or the slave who lives on in this unthinking way, 
stands very much nearer than ours to that of the brute, 
which is confined entirely to the present moment; but, for 
that very reason, it has also less of pain in it than ours. 
Nay, since all pleasure is in its nature negative, that is to 
say, consists in freedom from some form of misery or need, 
the constant and rapid interchange between setting about 
something and getting it done, which is the permanent ac- 
companiment of the work they do, and then again the 
augmented form which this takes when they go from work 
to rest and the satisfaction of their needs — all this gives 
them a constant source of enjoyment; and the fact that it 
is much commoner to see happy faces among the pool 



420 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

than among the rich, is a sure proof that it is used to 
good advantage. 

Passing from this kind of man, consider, next, the 
eober, sensible merchant, who leads a life of speculation, 
thinks long over his plans and carries them out with great 
care, founds a house, and provides for his wife, his children 
and descendants; takes his share, too, in the life of the 
community. It is obvious that a man like this has a much 
higher degree of consciousness than the former, and so his 
existence has a higher degree of reality. 

Then look at the man of learning, who investigates, it 
may be, the history of the past. He will have reached the 
point at which a man becomes conscious of existence as a 
whole, sees beyond the period of his own life, beyond his 
own personal interests, thinking over the whole course of 
the world's history. 

Then, finally, look at the poet or the philosopher, in 
whom reflection has reached such a height, that, instead 
of being drawn on to investigate any one particular phe- 
nomenon of existence, he stands in amazement before 
existence itself, this great sphinx, and makes it his prob- 
lem. In him consciousness has reached the degree of 
clearness at which it embraces the world itself: his intellect 
has completely abandoned its function as the servant of his 
will, and now holds the world before him; and the world 
calls upon him much more to examine and consider it, 
than to play a part in it himself. If, then, the degree of 
consciousness is the degree of reality, such a man will be 
sure to exist most of all, and there will be sense and signi- 
ficance in so describing him. 

Between the two extremes here sketched, and the inter- 
vening stages, every one will be able to find the place at 
which he himself stands. 



We know that man is in general superior to all other 
animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being 
trained. Mohammedans are trained to pray with their 
faces turned toward Mecca, five times a day; and they 
never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross them- 
selves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on. Indeed, it 
may be said that religion is the chef d'oeuvre of the art of 
training, because it trains people in the way they shall 



fURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 421 

think- and, as is well known, yon cannot begin the process 
too early. There is no absurdity so palpable bnt that ift 
may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin 
to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeat- 
ing it with an air of great solemnity. For as in the case of 
animals, so in that of men, training is successful only 
when you begin in early youth. 

Noblemen and gentlemen are trained to hold nothing 
sacred but their word of honor — to maintain a zealous, 
rigid, and unshaken belief in the ridiculous code of chiv- 
alry; and if they are called upon to do so, to seal their 
belief by dying for it, and seriously to regard a king as a 
being of a higher order. 

Again, our expressions of politeness, the compliments 
we make, in particular, the respectful attentions we pay to 
ladies, are a matter of training; as also our esteem for good 
birth, rank, titles, and so on. Of the same character is 
the resentment we feel at any insult diiected against us; 
and the measure of this resentment may be exactly deter- 
mined by the nature of the insult. An Englishman, for 
instance, thinks it a deadly insult to be told that he is no 
gentleman, or, still worse, that he is a liar; a Frenchman 
has the same feeling if you call him a coward, and a Ger- 
man if you say he is stupid. 

There are many persons who are trained to be strictly 
honorable in regard to one particular matter, while they 
have little honor to boast of in anything else. Many a 
man, for instance, will not steal your money; but he will 
lay hands on everything of yours that he can enjoy without 
having to pay for it. A man of business will often deceive 
you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely re- 
fuse to commit a theft. 



Imagination is strong in a man when that particular 
'unction of the brain which enables him to observe is 
loused to activity without any necessary excitement of the 
senses. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active 
just in proportion as our senses are not excited by external 
objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or 
in a sick room; a^iiet, twilight, darkness — these are the 
things that promote its activity; and under their influence 
!t comes into play of itself. On the other hand, when 3 



i%% STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

great deal of material is presented to our faculties of obser- 
vation, as happens on a journey, or in the hurly-burly of 
the world, or, again, in broad daylight, the imagination is 
idle, and, even though call may be made upon it, refuses 
to become active, as though it understood that that was not 
its proper time. 

However, if the imagination is to yield any real product, 
it must have received a great deal of material from the 
external world. This is the only way in which its store- 
house can be filled. The fantasy is nourished much in 
the same way as the body, which is least capable of any 
work and enjoys doing nothing, just in the very moment 
when it receives its food, which it has to digest. And yet 
it is to this very food that it owes the power which it after- 
ward puts forth at the right time. 



Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If 
it goes past the center of gravity ou one side, it must go a 
like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain 
time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at 
rest. 



By a process of contraction, distance in space makes 
things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is 
why a landscape looks so much better in a contracting 
mirror or in a camera obscura, than it is in reality. The 
same effect is produced by distance in time. • The scenes 
and events of long ago and the persons who took part in 
them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which 
sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable 
details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it 
always seems defective. 

And again as regards space, small objects close to us look 
big. and if they are very close, we may be able to see noth- 
ing else, but when we go a little way off, they become 
minute and invisible. It is the same again, as regards 
time. The little incidents and accidents of every day fill 
us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion as long as 
they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, 
so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless 
stream of time they lose what significance they had; we 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 423 

think do more of them and soon forget them altogether, 
They were big only because they were near. 



Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind, but affections 
of the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of mem- 
ory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which 1 
Jtnean that we cannot renew them. We can recall only tho 
Jrjeas that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things 
we were led to say; and these form a gauge of our feelings 
at the time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is 
always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference 
to us as soon as they are over. This explains the vanity 
of the attempt, which we sometimes make, to revive the 
pleasures and the pains of the past. Pleasure and pain are 
essentially an affair of the will, and the will, as such, is 
not possessed of memory, which is a function of the intel- 
lect; and this in its turn gives out and takes in nothing 
but thoughts and ideas, which are not here in question. 

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly 
recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good 
days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of 
the bad. 



We have a much better memory for actual objects or pic- 
tures than for mere ideas. Hence a good imagination 
makes it easier to learn languages; for by its aid, the new 
word is at once united with the actual object to which it 
refers; whereas, if there is no imagination, it is simply put 
on a parallel with the equivalent word in the mother 
tongue. 

Mnemonics should not only mean the art of keeping 
something indirectly in the memory by the use of some 
direct pun or witticism; it should, rather, be applied to a 
systematic theory of memory, and explain its se\eral at- 
tributes by reference both to its real nature, and to the 
relation in which these attributes stand to one another. 



There are moments in life when our senses obtain a 
nigher and rarer degree of clearness, apart from any par- 
ticular occasion for it in the nature of our surroundings; 



424 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

and explicable, rather, on physiological grounds alone, as 
the result of some enhanced state of susceptibility, working 
from within outward. Such moments remain iudelibly 
impressed upon the memory and preserve themselves in 
their individuality entire. We can assign no reason for it, 
nor explain why this among so many thousand moments 
like it should be specially remembered. It seems as much 
a mattet of chance as when single specimens of a whole 
race tt animals now extiuct are discovered in the layers of 
a rock; or when, on opening a book, we light upon an in- 
sect accidentally crushed within the leaves. Memories of 
that kind are always sweet and pleasant. 



It occasionally happens that, for no particular reason, 
long-forgotten scenes suddenly start up in the memory. 
This may in many cases be due to the action of some hardly 
perceptible odor, which accompanied those scenes and now 
recurs exactly the same as before. For it is well known 
that the sense of smell is specially effective in awaking 
memories, and that in general it does not require much to 
rouse a train of ideas. And I may say, in passing, that the 
sense of sight is connected with the understanding,* the 
sense of hearing with the reason, f and, as we see in the 
present case, the sense of smell with the memory. Touch 
and taste are more material and dependent upon contact. 
They have no ideal side. 



It must also be reckoned among the peculiar attributes 
of memory that a slight state of intoxication often so 
greatly enhances the recollection of past times and scenes, 
that all the circumstances connected with them come back 
aiuch more clearly than would be possible in a state of 
sobriety; but that, on the other hand, the recollection of 
what one said or did while the intoxication lasted, is more 
than usually imperfect; nay, that if one has been absolutely 
tipsy, it is gone altogether. We may say, then, that while 
intoxication enhances the memory for what is past, it 
allows it to remember little of the present. 

* " Vierfache Wurzel," § 21. 
\ " Parerm*-" vol. ii., $ 811. 



FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 425 

Men need some kind of external activity, because they 
Are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within, 
they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it dis- 
turbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often 
most ruinous to them. 



I am not surprised that some people are bored when they 
find themselves alone; for they cannot laugh if they are 
quite by themselves. The very idea of it seems folly to 
them. 

Are we, then to look upon laughter as merely a signal 
for others — a mere sign, like a word? What makes it 
impossible for people to laugh when they are alone is noth- 
ing but want of imagination, dullness of mind generally — 
avai6hr]6ia Hal {3padvrr?s ipvxrjS, as Theophrastus has it.* 
The lower animals never laugh, either alone or in 
company. Mvson, the misanthropist, was once sur- 
prised by one of these people as he was laughing to himsell 
" Why do you laugh?" he asked; " there is no one with 
you." That is just why I am laughing," said Myson. 



Natural gesticulation, such as commonly accompanies 
any lively talk, is a language of its own, more widespread, 
even, than the language of words — so far, I mean, as it is 
independent of words and alike in all nations. It is true 
that nations make use of it in proportion as they are viva- 
cious, and that in particular cases, among the Italians, for, 
instance, it is supplemented by certain peculiar gestures 
which are merely conventional, and therefore possessed of 
nothing more than a local value. 

In the universal use made of it, gesticulation has some 
analogy with logic and grammar, in that it has to do with the 
form, rather than with the matter, of conversation; but 
on the other hand it is distinguishable from them by the 
fact that it has more of a moral than of an intellectual 
bearing; in other words, it reflects the movements of the 
will. As an accompauiment of conversation it is like the 
bass of a melody; and if, as in music, it keeps true to the 
progress of the treble, it serves to heighten the effect. 

* " Characters," c. 27- 



426 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

In a conversation, the gesture depends upon the form in 
which the subject-matter is conveyed; and it is interest- 
ing to observe that, whatever that subject-matter may be, 
with a recurrence of the form, the very same gesture is re- 
peated. So if I happen to see — from my window, say — ■ 
two persons carrying on a lively conversation, without my 
being able to catch a word, I can, nevertheless, understand 
the general nature of it perfectly well; I mean, the kind of 
thing that is being said and the form it takes. There is 
no mistake about it. The speaker is arguing about some- 
thing, advancing his reasons, then limiting their applica- 
tion, then driving them home and drawing the conclusion 
in triumph; or he is recounting his experiences, proving 
perhaps, beyond the shadow of a doubt, how much he lias 
been injured, but bringing the clearest and most damning 
evidence to show that his opponents were foolish and ob- 
stinate people who would not be convinced or else he is 
telling of the splendid plan he laid, and how he carried it to 
a successful issue, or perhaps failed because the luck was 
against him; or, it may be, he is saying that he was com- 
pletely at a loss to know what to do, or that he was quick 
in seeing through some trap set for him, and that by in- 
sisting on his rights or by applying a little force, he suc- 
ceeded in frustrating and punishing his enemies; and so 
on in hundreds of cases of a similar kind. 

Strictly speaking, however, what I get from gesticula- 
tion alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of 
what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a 
moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintes- 
sence, the true substance of the conversation, and this re- 
mains identical, no matter what may have given rise to the 
conversation, or what it may be about; the relation between 
the two being that of a general idea or class-name to the 
individuals which it covers. 

As I have said, the most interesting and amusing part 
of the matter is the complete identity and solidarity of 
the gestures used to denote the same set of circumstances, 
even though by people of every different temperament; so 
that the gestures become exactly like words of a language, 
alike for every one, and subject only to such small modi- 
fications as depend upon variety of accent and education. 
And yet there can be no doubt but tliat these standing 
gestures which everv one uses are the result of no conveu- 



0$ EDUCATION. 42? 

tion or collusion. They Hie original and i?mate — a true 
language of nature; consolidated, it maybe, by imitation 
and the influence of custom. 

It is well known that it is part of an actor's duty to make 
a careful study of gesture; and the same thing is true, to a 
somewhat smaller degree, of a public speaker. This study 
must consist chiefly in watching others and imitating their 
movements, for there are no abstract rules fairly applicable 
to the matter, with the exception of some very genera) 
leading principles, such as — to take an example — that tho 
gesture must not follow the word, but rather come imme- 
diately before it, by way of announcing its approach and 
attracting the hearer's attention. 

Englishmen entertain a peculiar contempt for gesticula- 
tion, and look upon it as something vulgar and undignified. 
This seems to me a silly prejudice on their part, and the 
outcome of their general prudery. For here we have a 
language which nature has given to every one, and which 
every one understands; and to do away with and forbid it 
for no better reason than that it is opposed to that much- 
lauded thing, gentlemanly feeling, is a very questionable 
proceeding. 



ON EDUCATION. 

The human intellect is said to be so constituted that 
general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observa- 
tions, and therefore come after them in point of time. If 
this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a 
man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for 
what he learns — who has no teacher and no book — such a 
man knows quite well which of his particular observations 
belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. 
He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his ex- 
perience, and accordingly, he treats everything that comes 
in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called 
the natural method of education. 

Gontrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other 
people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head 
crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of 
extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may 



428 SI UDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular 
observations which go to make these general ideas will 
come to you later on in the course of experience; but until 
that time arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, 
you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint; you 
see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a 
wrong way. So it is that education perverts the 
mind. 

This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a 
long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the 
world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of 
things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our 
demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at 
another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is 
simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are 
now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever 
apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct oppo- 
sition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining 
general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is 
putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing 
the child's own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to 
judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies 
to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other 
people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a 
false application of general ideas, have afterward to be cor- 
rected by long years of experience; and it is seldom that 
they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of 
learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is 
often to be met with in people who have had no instruction 
at all. 

To acquire a knowledge of the world might be defined as 
the aim of all education; and it follows from what I have 
said that special stress should be laid upon beginning to 
acquire this knowledgeat the right end. As I have shown, 
this means, in the main, that the particular observation of 
a thing shall precede the general idea of it; further, that 
narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before ideas of 
a wide range. It means, therefore, that the whole system 
of education shall follow in the steps that must have been 
taken by the ideas themselves in the course of their for- 
mation. But whenever any of these steps are skipped or left 
out, the instruction is defective, and the ideas obtained are 
false; and, finally, a distorted view of the world arises. 



ON EDUCATION^. 429 

peculiar to the individual himself — a view such as almost 
every oue entertains for some time, and most men for as 
long as they live. No one can look into his own mind 
without seeing that it was only after reaching a very- 
mature age, and in some cases when he least expected it, 
that he came to a right understanding or a clear view of 
many matters in his life that, after all, were not very diffi- 
cult or complicated. Up till then, they were points in his 
knowledge of the world which were still obscure, due to 
his having skipped some particular lesson in those early 
days of his education, whatever it may have been like — 
whether artificial and conventional or of that natural 
kind which is based upon individual experience. 

It follows that an attempt should be made to find out 
the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that education 
may proceed methodically by keeping to it, and that 
children may become acquainted with the ways of the 
world, without getting wrong ideas into their heads, which 
very often cannot be got out again. If this plan were 
adopted, special care would have to be taken to prevent 
children from using words without clearly understanding 
their meaning and application. The fatal tendency to be 
satisfied with words instead of trying to understand things 
— to learn phrases by heart, so that they may prove a 
refuge in time of need, exists, as a rule, even in children; 
and the tendency lasts on into manhood, making the know- 
edge of many learned persons to consist in mere verbiage. 

However, the main endeavor must always be to let par- 
ticular observations precede general ideas, and not vice 
versa, as is usually and unfortunately the case; as though 
a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a 
verse be begun by writing down the rhyme! The ordinary 
method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense 
of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it 
has had any but a very few particular observations. It 
is thus that he afterward comes to view the world and 
gather experience through the medium of those ready- 
made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him 
out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be. 

A man sees a great many things when he looks at the 
world for himself, and he sees them from many sides; 
but this method of learning is not nearly so short 
or so quick as the method which employs abstract ideas 



430 81 UDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

and makes hasty generalizations about everything. 
Experience, therefore, will be a long time in correcting 
preconceived ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an 
end: for wherever a man finds that the aspect of things 
seems to contradict the general ideas he has formed, he 
will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial and 
one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and 
deny that it stands in any contradiction at all with his 
preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve 
them uninjured. So it is that many a man carries about a 
burden of wrong notions all his life long — crotchets, whims, 
fancies, prejudices, which at last become fixed ideas. 
The fact is that he has never tried to form his fundamental 
ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his own 
way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his 
ideas ready-made from other people; and this it is that 
makes him — as it makes how many others! — so shallow 
and superficial. 

Instead of that method of instruction, care should be 
taken to educate children on the natural lines. No idea 
should ever be established in a child's mind otherwise than 
by what the child can see for itself, or at any rate it should 
be verified by the same means; and the result of this would 
be that the child's ideas, if few, would be well-grounded 
and accurate. It would learn how 'co measure things by 
its own standard rather than by another's; and so it would 
escape a thousand strange fancies and prejudices, and not 
need to have them eradicated by the lessons it will subse- 
quently be taught in the school of life. The child would, 
in this way, have its mind once for all habituated to 
clear views and thorough-going knowledge; it would use 
its own judgment and take an unbiased estimate of things. 

And, in general, children should not form their notions 
of what life is like from the copy before they have learned 
it from the original, to whatever aspect of it their attention 
may be directed. Instead, therefore, of hastening to place 
books, and books alone, in their hands, let them be made 
acquainted, step by step, with things — with the actual cir- 
cumstances of human life. And above all let care be 
taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of the 
world as it is, to educate them always to derive their ideas 
directly from real life, and to shape them in corfc./^ity 
with it— not to fetch thera fro?p other sources, such as 



ON EDUCATION 431 

books, fairy tales, or what people say — than to apply them 
ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their 
heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either 
see things in a false light or try in vain to remodel the 
world to suit their views, and so enter upon false paths; 
and that, too, whether they are only constructing theories 
of life or engaged in the actual business of it. It is in- 
credible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong 
notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on 
to bear a crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons 
which are learned from real life in the world have to be 
devoted mainly to their extirpation. "To unlearn the evil" 
was the answer which, according to Diogenes Laertius,* 
Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of 
knowledge was most necessary; and we can see what he 
meant. 

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruc- 
tion in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of seri- 
ous error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch 
of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; be- 
cause wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted 
out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last 
to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention 
either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as 
mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular 
danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural 
science, history, and so on. And in general, the branches 
of knowledge which are to be studied at any period of life 
should be such as the mind is equal to at that period and 
can perfectly understand. Childhood and youth form the 
time for collecting materials, for getting a special and 
thorough knowledge of individual and particular things, 
In those years it is too early to form views on a large 
scale; and ultimate explanations must be put off to a later 
date. The faculty of judgment, which cannot come into 
play without mature experience, should be left to itself; 
and care should be taken not to anticipate its action by 
inculcating prejudice, which will paralyze it forever. 

On the other hand, the memory should be specially taxed 
in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most te- 
nacious. But in choosing the things that should be com* 

* vi. 7. 



432 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

initted to memory the utmost care and forethought must 
be exercised; as lessons well learned in youth are never foi- 
gotten. This precnus soil must therefore be cultivated so 
as to bear as much fruit as possible. If you think how 
deeply rooted in your memory are those persons whom you 
knew in the first twelve years Ox your life, how indelible the 
impression made upon you by the events of those years, 
how clear your recollection of most of the things that 
happened to you then, most of what was told or taught you, 
it will seem a natural thing to take the susceptibility and 
tenacity of the mind at that period as the groundwork of 
education. This may be done by a strict observance of 
method, and a systematic regulation of the impressions 
which the mind is to receive. 

But the years of youth alloted to man are, short, and 
memory is, in general, bound within narrow limits; still more 
so, the memory of any one individual. Since this is the 
case, it is all-important to till the memory with what is 
essential and material in any branch of knowledge, to the 
exclusion of everything else. This decision as to what is 
essential and material should rest with the master-minds in 
every department of thought; their choice should be made 
after the most mature deliberation, and the outcome of it 
fixed and determined. Such a choice would have to pro- 
ceed by sifting the things which it is necessary and impor- 
tant for a man to know in general, and then, necessary and 
important for him to know in any particular business or 
calling. Knowledge of the first kind would have to be 
classified, after an encyclopedic fashion, in graduated 
courses, adapted to the degree of general culture which a 
man may be expected to have in the circumstances in 
which he is placed; beginning with a course limited to the 
necessary requirements of primary education, and extend- 
ing upward to the subjects treated of in all the branches 
of philosophical thought. The regulation of the second 
kind of knowledge would be left to those who had shown 
genuine mastery in the several departments into which it 
is divided; and the whole system would provide an elabo- 
ate rule or canon for intellectual education, which would, 
of course, have to be revised every ten years. Some such 
arrangement as this would employ the youthful power of 
the memory to best advantage, and supply excellent work- 
ing material to the faculty of judgment, when it made its 
appearance later on. 



ON ED UCA TION. 433 

A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in othei 
words, it has readied the most complete state of perfection 
to which he, as an individual, is capable of bunging it, 
when an extict correspondence is established between the 
whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually 
perceived for himself. This will mean that each of his 
abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of 
observation, which alone endows it with any real value; 
and also that he is able to place every observation he makes 
under the right abstract idea which belongs to it. Matur- 
ity is the work of experience alone; and therefore it re- 
quires time. The knowledge we derive from our own ob- 
servation is usually distinct from that which we acquire 
through the medium of abstract ideas; the one coming to 
us in the natural way, the other by what people tell us, 
and the course of instruction we receive, whether it is 
good or bad. The result is, that in youth there is generally 
very little agreement or correspondence between our 
abstract ideas, which are merely phrases fixed in the mind, 
and that real knowledge which we have obtained by our 
own observation. It is only later on that a gradual ap- 
proach takes place between these two kinds of knowledge, 
accompanied by a mutual correction of error; and knowl- 
edge is not mature until this coalition is accomplished. 
This maturity or perfection of knowledge is something 
quite independent of another kind of perfection, which 
may be of a high or a low order — the perfection, I mean, 
to which a man may bring his own individual faculties; 
which is measured, not by any correspondence between the 
two kinds of knowledge, but by the degree of intensity 
which each kind attains. 

For the practical man the most needful thing is to ac- 
quire an accurate and profound knowledge of the ways of 
the world. But this, though the most needful, is also the 
most wearisome of all studies, as a man may reach a great 
age without coming to the end of his task; whereas, in the 
domain of the sciences, he masters the more important 
facts when he is still young. In acquiring that knowledge 
of the world, it is while he is a novice, namely, in boyhood 
and in youth, that the first and hardest lessons are put be- 
fore him; but it often happens that even in later yeara 
there is still a great deal to be learned. 

The study is difficult enough in itself; but the difficulty 



434 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

is doubled by novels, which represent a state of things in 
life and the world, such as, in fact, does not exist. Youth 
is credulous, and accepts these views of life, which then 
become part and parcel of the mind; so that, instead of a 
merely negative condition of ignorance, you have positive 
error — a whole tissue of false notions to start with; and at 
a later date these actually spoil the schooling of experience, 
and put a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. If, 
before this, the youth had no light at all to guide him, he 
is now misled by a will-o-the-wisp; still more often is this 
the case with a girl. They have both had a false view of 
things foisted on to them by reading novels; and expecta- 
tions have been aroused which can never be fulfilled. This 
generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole life. 
In this respect those whose youth has allowed them no 
time or opportunity for reading novels — those who work 
with their hands and the like — are in a position of decided 
advantage There are a few novels to which this reproach 
cannot be addressed — nay, which have an effect the con- 
trary of bad. First and foremost, to give an example, "Gil 
Bias," and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their 
Spanish originals); further, "The Vicar of Wakefield,"aud, 
to some extent. Sir Walter Scott's novels. "Don Quixote" 
may be regarded as a satirical exhibition of the error to 
which I am referring. 



ON WOMEN. 



Schillek's poem in honor of women, "Wiirde der 
Frauen," is the result of much careful thought, and it 
appeals to the reader by its antithetic style and its use of 
contrast; but as an expression of the true praise which 
should be accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior to these 
few words of Jouy's: " Without women, the beginning of 
our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; 
and the end, of consolation." The same thing is more 
feelingly expressed by Byron in " Sardanapalus: " 

" The very first 
Of human life must spring from woman's breast, 
Your first small words are taught you from her lips» 
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs 



02f WOMEN. 435 

Too often breathed oat in a woman's hearing, 
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care 
Of watching the last hour of him who led them." 

'(Act I. Scene 2.) 

These two passages indicate the right standpoint foi the 
appreciation of women. 

You need only look at the way in which she is formed, 
to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, 
whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of 
life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the 
pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by sub- 
mission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient 
and cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys 
are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great 
deal of strength. The current of her life should be more 
gentle, peaceful and trivial than man's, without being 
essentially happier or unhappier. 

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and 
teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are 
themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, 
they are big children all their life long — a kind of inter- 
mediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, 
who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a 
girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and 
sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will 
in the world, could do if he were put in her place. 

With young girls nature seems to have had in view what, 
in the language of the drama, is called a striking effect; 
as for a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty 
and is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense of all 
the rest of their life; so that during those years they may 
capture the fantasy of some man to such a degree, that he 
is hurried away into undertaking the honorable care of 
them, in some form or other, as long as they live — a step 
for which there would not appear to be any sufficient war- 
ranty if reason only directed his thoughts. Accordingly, 
Nature has equipped woman, as she does all her creatures, 
with the weapons and implements requisite for the safe- 
guarding of her existence, and for just as long as it is 
necessary for her to have them. Here, as elsewhere, Nature 
proceeds with her usual economy; for just as the female 
ant, after fecundation, loses her wings, which are then 
superfluous, nay, actually a danger to the business of breed- 



436 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

nig; so, after giving birth- to one or two children, a woman 
generally loses her beauty; probably, indeed, for similar 
reasons. 

A.nd so we find that young girls, in their hearts, look 
upon domestic affairs or work of any kind as of secondary 
importance, if not actually as a mere jest. The only 
business that really claims their earnest attention is love, 
making conquests, and everything connected with this — 
dress, dancing, and so on. 

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and 
slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the 
maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties 
hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman, at eight- 
een. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason 
of a sort — very niggard in its dimensions. That is why 
women remain children their whole life long; never seeing 
anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the 
present moment, taking appearance for reality, and pre- 
ferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is 
by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in 
the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and 
considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of 
prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which so 
many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the dis- 
advantages which this involves, are shared in by the 
woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of 
reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectu- 
ally shortsighted, because, while she has an intuitive 
understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of 
vision is narrow and does not reach to what is remote: so 
that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have 
much less effect upon women than upon men. This is 
the reason why women are more often inclined to be extrava- 
gant, and sometimes carry their inclination to a length that 
borders upon madness. In their hearts women think that 
it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it — 
if possible during their husband's life, but, at any rate, 
after his death. The very fact that their husband hands 
them over his earnings for purposes of housekeeping, 
strengthens them in this belief. 

However many disadvantages all this may involve, 
there is at least this to be said in its favor; that the 
woman lives more in the present than the man.and that, if 



ON WOMEN. 437 

the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys it more eagerly. 
This is the source of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to 
woman, fitting her to amnse man in his hours of recrea- 
tion, and, in case of need, to console him when he is 
borne down by the weight of his cares. 

It is by no means a bad plan to consult women in mat- 
ters of difficulty, as the Germans used to do in ancient 
times; for their way of looking at things is quite different 
from ours, chiefly in the fact that they like to take the 
shortest way to their goal, and, in general, manage to fix 
their eyes upon what lies before them; while we, as a rule, 
see far beyond it, just because it is in front of our noses. 
In cases like this, we need to be brougnt back to the right 
standpoint, so as to recover the near and simple view. 

Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in theii 
judgment than we are, so that they do not see more in 
things than is really there; while, if our passions are 
aroused, we are apt to see things in an exaggerated way, or 
imagine what does not exist. 

The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains 
why it is that women show more sympathy for the unfor- 
tunate than men do, and so treat them with more kindness 
and interest; and why it is that, on the contrary, they are 
inferior to men in point of justice, and less honorable and 
conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning power 
is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over 
them, and those concrete things which lie directly before 
their eyes exercise a power which is seldom counteracted to 
any extent by abstract principles of thought, by fixed rules 
of conduct, firm resolutions, or, in general, by consideration 
for the past and the future, or regard for what is absent 
and remote. Accordingly, they possess the first and main 
elements that go to make a virtuous character, but they 
are deficient in those secondary qualities which are often a 
necessary instrument in the formation of it. * 

Hence it will be found that the fundamental fault of the 
female character is that it has no sense of justice. 
This is mainly due to the fact, already mentioned, that 
women are defective in the powers of reasoning and 

* In this respect they may be compared to an animal organism 
•which contains a liver but no gall-bladder. Here let me refer to 
^hat I have said in my treatise on " The Foundation of Morals," § 17. 



438 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which 
Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are 
dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence 
their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradi- 
cable tendency to say what is not true. For as lions are 
provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars 
with tusks, bulls with horns, and the cuttle fish with its 
cloud of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for 
her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation; 
and all the power which Nature has conferred upon man 
in the shape of physical strength and reason, has been 
bestowed upon women in this form. Hence dissimulation 
is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the 
stupid as of the clever. It is as natural for them to make 
use of it on every occasion as it is for those animals to 
employ their means of defense when they are attacked; 
they have a feeling that in doing so they are only within 
their rights. Therefore a woman who is perfectly truthful 
and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, 
and for this very reason they are so quick at seeing through 
dissimulation in others that it is not a wise thing to 
attempt it with them. But this fundamental defect 
which I have stated, with all that it entails, gives rise to 
falsity, faithlessness, treachery, ingratitude, and so on. 
Perjury in a court of justice is more often committed by 
women than by men. It may, indeed, be generally ques- 
tioned whether women ought to be sworn at all. From, 
time to time one finds repeated cases everywhere of ladies, 
who want for nothing, taking things from shop-counters, 
when no one is looking, and making off with them. 

Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species 
shall be the business of men who are young, strong and 
handsome; so that the race may not degenerate. This is 
the firm will and purpose of Nature in regard to the species, 
and it finds its expression in the passions of women. 
There is no law that is older or more powerful than this. 
Woe, then, to the man who sets up claims and interest* 
that will conflict with it; whatever he may say and do, 
they will be unmercifully crushed at the first serious en- 
counter. For Mie innate rule that governs women's con- 
duct, though it is secret and unformulated, nay, uncon- 
•Viioiis m its working, is this: " We are justified in deceiv 
og those who think they have acquired rights over ths 



ON WOMEN. 439 

species by paying little attention to the individual, that is, 
to us. The constitution and, therefore, the welfare of the 
species have been placed in our hands and committed to 
our care, through the control we obtain over the next gen- 
eration, which proceeds from us; let us discharge our 
duties conscientiously." But women have no abstract 
knowledge of this leading principle; they are conscious of 
it only as a concrete fact; and they have no other method 
of giving expression to it than the way >n which they act 
when the opportunity arrives. And then their conscience 
does not trouble them so much as we fancy; for in the 
darkest recesses of their heart, they are aware that in com- 
mitting a breach of their duty toward the individual, they 
have all the better fulfilled their duty towards the species, 
which is infinitely greater.* 

And since women exist in the main solely for the propa- 
gation of the species, and are not destined for anything 
else, they live, as a rule, more for the species than for tin? 
individual, and in their hearts take the affairs of tiie 
species more seriously than those of the individual. This 
gives their whole life and being a certain levity; the gen- 
eral bent of their character is in a direction fundamentally 
different from that of man; and it is this which produces 
that discord in married life which is so frequent, and almost 
the normal state. 

The natural feeling between men is mere indifference, 
but between women it is actual enmity. The reason of 
this is that trade-jealousy — odium figulinum — which, in 
the case of men, does not go beyond the confines of their 
own particular pursuit; but, with women, embraces the 
whole sex; since they have only one kind of business. 
Even when they meet in the street, women look at one an- 
other like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it is a patent 
fact that when two women make first acquaintance with 
each other, they behave with more constraint and dissimu- 
lation than two men would show in a like case; and hence 
it is that an exchange of compliments between two women 
is a much more ridiculous proceeding than between two 
men. Further, while a man will, as a general rule, always 

* A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may be 
found in my chief work. " Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, " 
vol. ii.., ch. 44- 



440 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

preserve a certain amount of consideration and humanity 
in speaking to others, even to those who are in a very 
inferior position, it is intolerable to see how proudly and 
disdainfully a fine lady will generally behave toward one 
who is in a lower social rank (I do not mean a woman who 
is in her service), whenever she speaks to her. The reason 
of this may be that, with women, differences of rank are 
much more precarious than with us; because, while a hun- 
dred considerations carry weight in our case, in theirs there 
is only one, namely, with which man they have found 
favor; as also that they stand in much nearer relations 
with one another than men do, in consequence of the one- 
sided nature of their calling. This makes them endeavor 
to lay stress upon differences of rank. 

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his 
sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to 
that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and 
short-legged race, for the whole beauty of the sex is bound 
up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful, 
there would be more warrant for describing women as the 
unsesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for 
fine art, have they really and truly any sense or suscepti- 
bility; it is a mere mockery if they make a pretense of it 
in order to assist their endeavor to please. Hence, as a 
result of this, they are incapable of taking a purely objective 
interest in everything; and the reason of it seems to me to 
be as follows. A man tries to acquire direct mastery over 
things, either by understanding them, or by forcing them 
to do his will. But a woman is always and everywhere 
reduced to obtaining this mastery indirectly, namely 
through a man; and whatever direct mastery she may have 
is entirely confined to him. And so it lies in woman's 
nature to look upon everything only as a means for con- 
quering man; and if she takes an interest in anything else, 
it is simulated — a mere roundabout way of gaining her 
ends by coquetry, and feigning what she does not feel. 
Hence even Rousseau declared: " Women have, in general, 
no love of any art; they have no proper knowledge of any; 
and they have no genius."* 

No one who sees at all below the surface can have failed 
to remark the same thing. You n«eed only observe the 

* Lettre « d'Alembert. Note xx. 



ON WOMEN. 441 

kind of attention women bestow upon a concert, an opera, 
or a play — the childish simplicity, for example, with which 
they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the 
greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks 
excluded women from their theaters, they were quite right 
in what they did; at any rate you would have been able to 
hear what was said upon the stage. In our day, besides, 
or in lieu of saying, " Let a woman keep silence in the 
church," it would be much to the point to say, " Let a 
woman keep silence in the theater." This might, perhaps, 
be put up in big letters on the curtain. 

And you cannot expect anything else of women if you 
consider that the most distinguished intellects among the 
whole sex have never managed to produce a single achieve- 
ment in the fine arts that is really great, genuine, and 
original, oj given to the world any work of permanent 
value in any sphere. This is most strikingly shown in 
regard to painting, where mastery of technique is at least 
as much within their power as within ours — and hence 
they ai<? diligent in cultivating it; but still, they 
have not a single great painting to boast of, just because 
they are deficient in that objectivity of mind which is so 
directly indispensable in painting. They never get beyond 
a subjective point of view. It is quite in keeping with 
this that ordinary women have no real susceptibility for art 
at all; for nature proceeds in strict sequence — non facit 
salhim. And Huarte*in his " Examen de ingenios para 
las scienzias "--a book which has been famous for three 
hundred years -denies women the possession of all the 
higher faculties. The case is not altered by particular and 
partial exceptions; taken as a whole, women are, and 
remain, thorough-going Philistines, and quite incurable. 
Henee, with that absurd arrangement which allows them 
to share the rank and title of their husbands, they are a 
constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions. And, further, 
it is just because they are Philistines that modern society, 
where they take the lead and set the tone, is in such a bad 
way. Napoleon's saying — that " women have no rank " — ■ 
should be adopted as the right standpoint in determining 

* Translator's Note. — Juan Huarte (1520?-1590) practiced as a 
physician at Madrid. The work cited by Schopenhauer is well known, 
^Dd lias been translated into many languages. 



442 STUDIES IN PESSIMfSM. 

their position in society; and as regards their other qualities^ 
Chamfort* makes the very true remark: " They are made 
to trade with our own weaknesses and our follies, but not 
with our reason. The sympathies that exist between them 
and men are skin-deep only, and do not touch the mind 
or the feelings or the character." 

They form the sexus sequior — the second sex, inferior in 
every respect to the first; their infirmities should be 
treated with consideration; but to show them great rever- 
ence is extremely ridiculous, and lowers us in their eyes. 
When nature made two divisions of the human race, she 
did not draw the line exactly through the middle. These 
divisions are polar and opposed to each other, it is true; 
but the difference between them is not qualitative merely, 
it is also quantitative. 

This is just the view which the ancients took of woman, 
and the view which people in the East take now; and their 
judgment as to her proper position is much more correct 
than ours, with our old French notions of gallantry and 
our preposterous system of reverence — that highest product 
of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have 
served only to make women more arrogant and overbearing: 
*o that one is occasionally reminded of the holy apes in 
Benares, who in the consciousness of their sanctity 
and inviolable position, think they can do exactly as they 
please. 

But in the West, the wcmen, and especially the " lady," 
finds herself in a false position; for woman, rightly called 
by the ancients sexus sequior is by no means fit to be the 
object of our honor and veneration, or to hold her head 
higher than man and be on equal terms with him. The 
consequences of this false position are sufficiently obvious. 
Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if this 
Number Two of the human race were in Europe also rele- 
gated to her natural place, and an end put to that lady- 
nuisance, which not only moves all Asia to laughter, but 
would have been ridiculed by Greece and Rome as well. It 
is impossible to calculate the good effects which such a 
change would bring about in our social, civil and political 
arrangements. There would be no necessity for the Salic 
law: it would be a superfluous truism. In Europe the " lady" 

* Translator's Note. — S^e " Counsels and Maxims/' p. 12, note. 



ON WOMEN. 443 

strictly so-called, is a being who should not exist all all; 
she should be either a housewife or a girl who hopes to 
become one; and she should be brought up, not to be arro- 
gant, but to 'be thrifty and submissive. It is just because 
there are such people as " ladies " in Europe that the women 
of the lower classes, that is to say, the great majority of 
the sex, are much more unhappy than they aie in the East. 
And even Lord Byron says: " Thought of the state of 
women under the ancient Greeks — convenient enough. 
Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric 
and the feudal ages — artificial and unnatural. They ought 
to mind home — and be well fed and clothed — but not 
mixed in society. Well educated, too, in religion — but to 
read neither poetry nor politics — nothing but books of 
piety and cookery. Music — drawing — dancing — also a 
little gardening and plowing now and then. I have seen 
them mending the roads in Epirus with good success. 
Why not, as well as hay-making and milking?" 

The laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the 
woman as the equivalent of the man — start, that is to say, 
from a wrong position. In our part of the world where 
monogamy is the rule, to marry means to have one's rights 
and double one's duties. Now, when the laws gave women 
equal rights with man, they ought to have also endowed 
her with a masculine intellect. But the fact is, that just 
in proportion as the honors and privileges which the laws 
accord to women, exceed the amount which Nature gives, 
is there a diminution in the number of women who really 
participate in these privileges; and all the remainder are 
deprived of their natural rights by just so much as is given 
to the others over and above their share. For the institu- 
tion of monogamy, and the laws of marriage which it en- 
tails, bestow upon the woman an unnatural position of 
privilege, by considering her throughout as the full equiv- 
alent of the man, which is by no means the case; and see- 
ing this, men who are shrewd and prudent very often 
scruple to make so great a sacrifice and to acquiesce in so 
unfair an arrangement. 

Consequently, while among polygamous nations every 
woman is provided for, where monogamy prevails the num- 
ber of married women is limited; and there remains over a 
large number of women without stay or support, who, in 
the upper classes, vegetate as useless old maids and in the 



444 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

lower succumb to bard work for whicb tbey are not suited; 
or else hecome ftlles dejoie, whose life is as destitute of joy 
as it is of honor. But under the circumstances they be- 
er me a necessity; and their position is openly recognized 
t,s serving the special end of warding off temptation from 
those women favored by fate, who have found, or may 
hope to find, husbands. In London alone there are 
eighty thousand prostitutes. What are they but the women, 
who, under the institution of monogamy, have come off 
worst? Theirs is a direful fate: they are human sacrifices 
offered up on the altar of monogamy. The women whose 
wretched position is here described are the inevitable set- 
off to the European lady with her arrogance and preten- 
sion. Polygamy is therefore a real benefit to the female 
sex if it is taken as a whole. And, from another point of 
view, there is no true reason why a man whose wife suffers 
from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually 
become too old for him, should not take a second: The 
motives which induce so many people to become converts 
to Mormonism * appear to be just'' those which militate 
against the unnatural institution of monogamy. 

Moreover, the bestowal of unnatural rights upon women 
has imposed upon them unnatural duties, and, neverthe- 
less, a breach of these duties makes them unhappy. Let 
me explain. A man may often think that his social or 
financial position will suffer if he marries, unless he makes 
csome brilliant alliance. His desire will then be to win a 
woman of his own choice under conditions other than those 
of marriage, such as will secure her position and that of 
the children. However fair, reasonable, fit and proper 
these conditions may be, and the woman consents by fore- 
going that undue amount of privilege which marriage 
alone can bestow, she to some extent loses her honor, be- 
cause marriage is the basis of civic society; and she will 
lead an unhappy life, since human nature is so constituted 
that we pay an attention to the opinion of other people 
which is out of all proportionate to its value. On the other 
hand, if she does not consent, she runs the risk either of 
having to be given in marriage to a man whom she does 
not like, or of being landed high and dry as an old maid; 

* Translator's Note. — The Mormons have recently given up 
polygamy, and received the American franchise in its stead. 



ON WOMEN. 445 

for the period during which she has a chance of being set- 
tled for life is very short. And in view of this aspect of 
the institution of monogamy, Thomasius , profoundly 
learned treatise, " de Concubinatu," is well worth reading; 
for it shows that, among all nations and in all ages, down 
to the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted; 
nay, that it was an institution which was to a certain 
extent actually recognized by law, and attended with no 
dishonor. It was only the Lutheran Reformation that 
degraded it from this position. It was seen to be a further 
justification for the marriage of the clergy; and then, after 
that the Catholic Church did not dare to remain behind- 
hand in the matter. 

There is no use arguing about polygamy; it must be taken 
as de facto existing everywhere, and the only question is as 
to how it shall be regulated. Where are there, then, 
any real monogamists? We all live, at any rate, for a time, 
and most of us, always, in polygamy. And so, since every 
man needs many women,. there is nothing fairer than to 
allow him, nay, to make it incumbent upon him, to pro- 
vide for many women. This will reduce woman to her 
true and natural position as a subordinate being; and the 
lady — that monster of European civilization andTeutonico- 
Christian stupidity — will disappear from the world, leaving 
only women, but no more unhappy women, of whom 
Europe is now full. 

In India no woman is ever independent, but in accord- 
ance with the law of Manu,* she stands under the control 
of her father, her husband, her brother or her son. It is, 
to be sure, a revolting thing that a widow should immolate 
herself upon her husband's funeral pvre; but it is also 
revolting that she should spend her husband s money with 
her paramours — the money for which he toiled his whole 
life long, in the consoling belief that he was providing for 
his children. Happy are those who have kept the middle 
course — medium tenuere beati. 

The first love of a mother for her child is, with the 
lower animals as with men, of a purely instinctive character, 
and so it ceases when the child is no longer in a physically 
helpless condition. After that, the first love should give 
way to one that is based on habit and reason; but this 

* Ch. V.. v. 148. 



446 STUDIES IJY PESSIMISM. 

often fails to make its appearance, especially where the 
mother did not love the father. The love of a father for 
his child is of a different order, and more likely to last; 
because it has its foundation in the fact that in the child 
he recognizes his own inner self; that is to say, his love for 
it is metaphysical in its origin. 

In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the 
modern world, even among the Hottentots, * property is 
inherited by the male descendants alone; it is only in 
Europe that a departure has taken place, but not among 
the nobility, however. That the property which has cost 
men long years of toil and effort, and been won with so 
much difficulty, should afterward come into the hands of 
women, who then, in their lack of reason, squander it in a 
short time, or otherwise fool it away, is a grievance and a 
wrong, as serious as it is common, which should be pre« 
vented by limiting the right of women to inherit. In my 
opinion, the best arrangement would be that by which 
women, whether widows or daughters, should never receive 
anything beyond the interest for life on property secured 
by mortgage, and in no case the property itself, or the 
capital, except where all male descendants fail. The 
people who make money are men, not women; and it fol- 
lows from this that women are neither justified in having 
unconditional possession of it, nor fit persons to be en- 
trusted with its admiration.^When wealth, in any true sense 
of the word, that is to say, funds, houses or land, is to go 
to them as an inheritance, they should never be allowed the 
free disposition of it. In their case a guardian should 
always be appointed; and hence they should never be given 
the free control of their own children, wherever it can be 
avoided. The vanity of women, even though it should 
not prove to be greater than that of men, has this much 
danger in it, that it takes an entirely material direction. 
They are vain, I mean, of their personal beauty, and then 
of finery, show and magnificence. That is just why they 
are so much in their element in society. It is this, too 
which makes them so inclined to be extravagant, all the 
more as their reasoning power is low. Accordingly we find 

* Leroy, " Lettres pkilosophiques sur 1'irtelligence et la perfecti- 
bilite des ankuaux, avec quelqu.es lettres sur l'houiuie," p. 298, Paris, 
1802. 



ON NOISE. 44? 

an ancient writer describing women as in general of an ex- 
travagant nature — Fvvr) to 6vroXov t6Ti danavr/pov q>v6et.* 
But with men vanity often takes the direction of non- 
material advantages, such as intellect, learning, courage. 

In the Politics f Aristotle explains the great disadvan- 
tage which accrued to the Spartans from the fact that they 
conceded too much to their women, by giving them the 
right of inheritance and dower, and a great amount of in- 
dependence; and he shows how much this contributed to 
Sparta's fall. May it not be the case in France that the 
influence of women, which went on increasing steadilj 
from the time of Louis XIII., was to blame for that grad* 
ual corruption of the court and the government, which 
brought about the revolution of 1789, of which all subse 
quent disturbances have been the fruit? However tha* 
may be, the false position which women occupy, demon- 
strated as it is, in the most glaring way, by the institution 
of the lady, is a fundamental defect in our social scheme^ 
and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must 
spread its baneful influence in all directions. 

That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by 
the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural 
position of complete independence, immediately attaches 
herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be 
guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and 
master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a 
priest. 



ON NOISE. 



Kant wrote a treatise on "The Vital Powers." I should 
prefer to write a dirge for them. The superabundant dis- 
play of vitality, which takes the form of knocking, ham- 
mering, and tumbling things about, has proved a daily 
torment to me all my life long. There are people, it is 
true — nay, a great many people — who smile at such things, 
because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are just 
the very people who are also not sensitive to argument, or 
thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intel- 

* Brunck's " Gnomici poetae graeci,"v. 115. 
\ Bk. L, ch 9. 



448 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

lectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of 
their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality. On i\\e 
other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. In 
the biographies of almost all great writers, or wherever 
slse their personal utterances are recorded, I find complaints 
about it; in the case of Kant, for instance, Goethe, Lich- 
tenberg, Jean Paul; and if it should happen that any 
writer has omitted to express himself on the matter, it is 
only for want of an opportunity. 

This aversion to noise I should explain as follows: If 
you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely 
lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up 
into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great 
intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as 
it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and 
drawn oft' from the matter in hand; for its superiority de- 
pends upon its power of concentration — of bringing all its 
strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a 
concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light 
that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to 
this concentration. That is why distinguished minds have 
always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in 
any form, as something that breaks in upon and distracts 
their thoughts. Above all have they been averse to that 
violent interruption that comes from noise. Ordinary 
people are not much put out by anything of the sort. The 
most sensible and intelligent of all the nations in Europe 
lays down the rule, "Never interrupt!" asihe eleventh com- 
mandment. Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of 
interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a 
disruption of thought. Of course, where there is nothing 
to interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful. 
Occasionally it happens that some slight but constant 
noise continues to bother, and distract me for a time be- 
fore I become distinctly conscious of it. All I feel is a 
steady increase in the. labor of thinking — just as though I 
were trying to walk with a weight on my foot. At last I 
find out what it is. 

Let me now, however, pass from genus to species. The 
most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the crack 
ing of whips — a truly infernal thing when it is done in the 
narrow resounding streets of a town. I denounce it as 
making a peaceful life impossible: it puts an end to all 



ON NOISE. 449 

quiet xhought. That this cracking of whips should be 
allowed at all seems to me to show in the clearest *way how 
benseless and thoughtless is the nature of mankind. No 
one with anything like an idea in his head can avoid a feel- 
ing of actual pain at this sudden, sharp crack, which par- 
alyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and mur- 
ders thought. Every time this noise is made, it must 
disturb a hundred people who are applying their minds to 
business of some sort, no matter how trivial it may be; 
while on the thinker its effect is woeful and disastrous, 
cutting his thoughts asunder, much as the executioner's 
axe severs the head from the body. No sound, be it ever 
so shrill, cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed 
cracking of whips; you feel the sting of the lash right 
inside your head; and it affects the brain in the same way 
as touch affects a sensitive plant, and for the same length 
of time. 

With all due respect for the most holy doctrine of 
utility, I really cannot see why a fellow who is taking 
away a wagon-load of gravel or dung should thereby obtain 
the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may happen 
to be springing up in ten thousand heads — the number he 
will disturb one after another in half an hour's drive 
through the town. Hammering, the barking of dogs, and 
the crying of children are horrible to hear; but your only 
genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip; it ex- 
ists for the purpose of destroying every pleasant moment 
of quiet thought that any one may now and then enjoy. 
If the driver had no other way of urging on his horse than 
by making this most abominable of all noises, it would be ex- 
cusable; but quite the contrary is the case. This cursed 
cracking of whips is not only unnecessary, but even use- 
less. Its aim is to produce an effect upon the intelligence 
of the horse; but through the constant abuse of it, the 
animal becomes habituated to the sound, which falls upon 
blunted feelings and produces no effect at all. The horse 
does not go any the faster for it. You have a remarkable 
example of this in the ceaseless cracking of his whip on the 
part of a cab-driver, while he is proceeding at a slow pace 
on the look-out for a fare. If he were to give his horse the 
slightest touch with the whip, it would have much more 
effect. Supposing, however, that it were absolutely neces- 
sary to crack *"he whin in order to keep the horse constantly 



450 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM, 

in mind of its presence, it would be enough to make the 
hundredth part of the noise. For it is a well-known fact 
that, in regard to sight and hearing, animals are sensitive 
to even the faintest indications; they are alive to things 
that we can scarcely perceive. The most surprising 
instances of this are furnished by trained dogs and canary- 
birds. 

It is obvious, therefore, that here we have to do with an 
act of pure wantonness; nay, with an impudent defiance 
offered to those members of the community who work with 
their heads by those who work with their hands. That 
such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of 
barbarity and iniquity, all the more as it could easily be 
remedied by a police-notice to the effect that every lash 
shall have a knot at the end of it. There can be no harm 
in drawing the attention of the mob to the fact that the 
classes above them work with their heads, for any kind e(! 
head work is mortal anguish to the man in the street. A 
fellow who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous 
town with unemployed post-horses or cart-horses, and keeps 
on cracking a whip several yards long with all his might, 
deserves there and then to stand down and receive five 
really good blows with a stick. All the philanthropists in 
the world, and all the legislators, meeting to advocate and 
decree the total abolition of corporal punishment, will 
never persuade me to the contrary. There is something 
even more disgraceful than what I have just mentioned. 
Often enough you may see a carter walking along the street 
quite alone, without any horses, and still cracking away 
incessantly; so accustomed has the wretch become to it in 
consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of this prac- 
tice. A man's body and the needs of his body are now 
3 very where treated with a tender indulgence. Is the think- 
ing mind then, to be the only thing that is never to ob- 
tain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, 
to say nothing of respect? Carters, porters, messengers— 
these are the beasts of burden among mankind; by all 
means let them be treated justly, fairly, indulgently, and 
with forethought; but they must not be permitted to stand 
in the way of the higher endeavors of humanity by wan- 
tonly making a noise. How many great and splendid 
thoughts, I should like to know, have been lost to the 
world by the crack of a whip? If I had the upper hand, 



OIh NOISE. 461 

I should soon produce in the heads of these people an in- 
dissoluble association of ideas between cracking a whip and 
getting a whipping. 

Let us hope that the more intelligent and refined among 
the nations will make a beginning in this matter, and then 
that the Germans may take example by it and follow suit.* 
Meanwhile, I may quote what Thomas Hood says of them: f 
i( For a musical nation, they are the most noisy I ever met 
with". That they are so is due to the fact, not that they 
are more fond of making a noise than other people — they 
would deny it if you asked them — but that their senses are 
obtuse; consequently, when they hear a noise, it does not 
affect them much. It does not disturb them in reading or 
thinking, simply because they do not think; they only 
smoke, which is their substitute for thought. The gen- 
eral toleration of unnecessary noise — the slamming of 
doors, for instance, a very unmannerly and ill-bred thing — 
is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dull- 
ness and lack of thought. In Germany it seems as though 
care were taken that no one should ever think for mere 
noise — to mention one form of it, the way in which drum- 
ming goes on for no purpose at all. 

Finally, as regards the literature of the subject treated 
of in this chapter, I have only one work to recommend, but 
it is a good one. I refer to a poetical epistle in terzo rimo by 
the famous painter Bronzino: entitled " De Romori, a Messer 
Luca Martini." It gives a detailed description of the torture 
to which people are put by the various noises of a small 
Italian town. Written in a tragi comic style, it is very 
amusing. The epistle may be found in " Opere burlesche 
del Berni, Aretino et altri," Vol. II. p. 258; apparently 
published in Utrecht in 1771. 

* According to a notice issued by the Society for the Protection of 
Animals in Munich the superfluous whipping and the cracking of 
whips were, in December, 1858, positively forbidden in Nureinburg 

\ In ' : Up the Rliine." 



452 STUDIES IK PESSIMISM. 

A FEW PARABLES. 

In A field of ripening corn I came to a place which had 
been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and as I glanced 
among the countless stalks, every one of them alike, stand- 
ing there so erect and bearing the full weight of the ear, [ 
saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and 
violet. How pretty they looked as they grew there so 
naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they 
are quite useless; they bear no fruit; they are mere weeds, 
suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of 
them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be 
nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of stalks. They 
are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life — so 
severe, but still useful and not without its fruit — play the 
same part as flowers in the corn. 



There are some really beautiful landscapes in the world, 
but the human figures in them are poor, and you had noi 
better look at them. 



The fly should be used as the symbol of impertinence 
and audacity; for while all other animals shun man more 
than anything else, and run away even before he come* 
near them, the fly lights upon his very nose. 



Two Chinamen traveling in Europe went to the theater 
for the first time. One of them did nothing but study the 
machinery, and he succeeded in finding out how it was 
worked. The other tried to get at the meaning of the 
piece in spite of his ignorance of the language. Here you 
have the astronomer and the philosopher. 



Wisdom which is only theoretical and never put into 
practice, is like a double rose; its color and its perfume are 
delightful, but it withers away and leaves no seed. 

No rose without a thorn. Yes, but many a thorn witk- 
cut a rose, 



A FEW PARABLES. 453 

A widespreading apple tree stood in full bloom, and 
behind it a straight fir raised its dark find tapering head. 
" Look at the thousands of gay blossoms which cover me 
everywhere/' said the apple tree; " what have you to show 
in comparison? Dark green needles!" " That is true," 
replied the fir, ''but when winter comes, you will be bared 
of your glory; and I shall be as I am now." 



Once, as I was botanizing under an oak, I found among 
a number of other plants of similar height one that was 
dark in color, with tightly closed leaves and a stalk that 
was very straight and stiff. When I touched it, it said to 
me in firm tones: " Let me alone; I am not for your col- 
lection, like these plants to which Nature has given only a 
single year of life. I am a little oak." 

So it is with a man whose influence is to last for hun- 
dreds of years. As a child, as a youth, often even as a full- 
grown man, nay, his whole life long, he goes about among 
his fellows, looking like them and seemingly as unimpor- 
tant. But let him alone; he will not die. Time will 
come and bring those who know how to value him. 



The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as 
though he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking 
deeper and deeper under him. 

This is a mystery which only those will understand who 
feel the truth of it. 



Your estimation of a man's size will be affected by the 
distance at which you stand from him, but in two entirely 
opposite ways according as it is his physical or his mental 
stature that you are considering. The one will seem 
smaller, the farther off you move; the other, greater 



Nature covers all her works with a varnish of beauty, 
like the tender bloom that is breathed, as it were, on the 
surface of a peach or plum. Painters and poets lay them- 
selves out to take off this varnish, to store it up, and give 
it us to be enjoyed at our leisure. We drink deep of this 
beauty long before we enter upon life itself; and when 



454 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM. 

afterward we come to see the works of nature for our- 
selves, the varnish is gone: the artists have used it up and 
we have enjoyed it in advance. Thus it is that the world 
so often appears harsh and devoid of charm, nay, actually 
repulsive. It were better to leave us to discover the var- 
nish for ourselves. This would mean that we should not 
enjoy it all at once and in large quantities; we should have 
no finished pictures, no perfect poems; but we shoulc 
look at all things in the genial and pleasing light in which 
even now a child of nature sometimes sees them — someone 
who has not anticipated his aesthetic pleasures by the help 
of art, or taken the charms of life too early. 



The cathedral in Mayence is so shut in by the houses 
that are built round about it, that there is no one spot from 
which you can see it as a whole. This is symbolic of 
everything great or beautiful in the world. It ought to 
gxisr. for its own sake alone, but before very long it is mis- 
used to serve alien ends. People come from all directions 
wanting to find in it support and maintenance for them- 
selves; they stand in the way and spoil its effect. To be 
sure, there is nothing surprising in this, for in a world of 
need and imperfection everything is seized upon which 
can be used to satisfy want. Nothing is exempt from this 
service, no, not even those very things which arise only 
when need and want are for a moment lost sight of — the 
beautiful and the true, sought for their own sakes. 

This is especially illustrated and corroborated in the 
case of institutions — whether great or small, wealthy or 
poor, founded, no matter in what century or in what land, 
to maintain and advance human knowledge, and generally 
to afford help to those intellectual efforts which ennoble 
the race. Wherever these institutions may be, it is not 
long before people sneak up to them under the pretense oi 
wishing to further those special ends, while they are ready 
>ed on by the desire to secure the emoluments which have 
been left for their furtherance, and thus to satisfy certain 
coarse and brutal instincts of their own. Thus it is that 
we come to have so many charlatans in every branch of 
knowledge. The charlatan takes very different shapes ac- 
cording to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who 
cares nothing about knowledge for his own sake, and only 



A FEW PARABLES, 455 

strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for hia 
own personal ends, which are always selfish and material. 

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs tc 
the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the °nd ho 
loses all patience he crushes both them and himself. Or 
he is like Gulliver at Lilliput, overwhelmed by an enormous 
number of little men. 



A mother gave her children ^Esop's fables to read, in 
the hope of educating and improving their minds; but 
they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise 
beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: " This 
is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid. You 
can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are 
able to talk; we've got beyond stories of that kind!" 

In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Ra- 
tionalists of the future. 



A number of porcupines huddled together fof warmth 
on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick oih 
another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. 
However the cold drove them together again, when just the 
same thing happened. At last, after many turns of hud- 
dling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be 
best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. 
In the same way the need of society drives the human por- 
cupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the 
many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. 
The moderate distance which they at last discover to he 
the only tolerable condition of intercourse, in the code of 
politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are 
roughly told — in the English phrase — " to keep their dis 
tance." By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth 
is only. very moderately satisfied; but then people do not 
get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers 
to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people 
nor get pricked himself. 

THE END. 



















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